City council ‘squandering’ funds by spending €1k a day seizing horses

Limerick City Council has been accused of “squandering” State funds by spending up to €1,000 a day on seizing stray horses illegally kept in the city.

The former mayor of Limerick, Cllr John Gilligan (Ind), said the bylaws must be reviewed as the money being spent could be put to better uses. “Even JP McManus doesn’t have five acres in the city to keep a horse,” he said.

In order to keep a horse in the city, the owner must have five acres of land, a horse passport, and the horse must also be micro-chipped. If these conditions are met, a licence is then granted by the council, but this is rare, the local authority said.

The documents also have to be produced for a horse to be released from the pound in Cork, where their stay costs €250 per night.

A total of €65,664 has been spent on impounding 71 horses illegally kept in Limerick City in the first three months of this year.

Horses were seized recently in Moyross, Southill, and Prospect, as well as in graveyards, industrial estates, and halting sites. In February, 10 horses were impoun-ded in one day in Moyross.

This is in addition to a spend of over €391,400 on impounding 260 horses last year — equivalent to over €1,000 a day.

Noel Shinnors, an inspector with the Limerick Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said most of the horses impounded in Cork were “either put down or sent to the slaughterhouse for meat”.

“Horses are worthless [in value] at the moment. There are a lot of horses and foals being dumped in wooded areas, and we are getting a lot of calls about animals being left for dead.”

Mr Gilligan said: “This is beyond me. This is a huge herd of horses. Will our grandchildren still be here talking about this in years to come? We’re spending €1,000 a day picking up some bloody nag and is it worth it? We’re squandering money and we have to re-examine this entire area.”

Caroline Curley, director of service at Limerick City Council, said as the horses were often in green space areas there was a difficulty in identifying the owners and prosecuting them.