Minister Malcolm Noonan says it wasn’t his decision to grant hare coursing licences.
The local Green Party Junior Minister says it was the senior minister in his Department Darragh O’Brien who signed off on a number of licences this month.
The responsibility comes under Heritage through the National Parks and Wildlife services as he outlined on KCLR’s The Way It Is with Sue Nunn “Within the heritage division we are responsible for what is a protected species, the Irish hare, so the ultimate decision comes down to the senior Minister in that regard and Darragh O’Brien issued what was a very restrictive licence for netting hares for this year which will ultimately mean about eleven meetings won’t go ahead so they are very restrictive licences”.
He admitted he had concerns over the issuing of licences for hare coursing this month noting “We’ll be commissioning another population survey for next year to look at the population of Irish hares, currently it stands, it seems to fluctuate from between around 230,000 to 300,000 animals with some cases of a very low density in a square kilometere, so I am absolutely concerned and I do think that Minister O’Brien did issue a very restrictive licence but ultimately it wasn’t my decision”.
Minister Noonan has also been called out on KCLR by Mrs Doyle actor Pauline McLynn to support a Bill banning harecoursing in Ireland. But he says his hands are tied now.
Meanwhile, during his appearance on the show Minister Noonan told The Way It is that he did need a controversial special advisor to add expertise in certain areas. More on that here
