Trust aims to find Irish homes for Irish dogs

IN your feature on the stray dogs crisis headlined ‘Left to die’ (December 23), Dogs Trust is mentioned a number of times and, unfortunately, there is an inaccuracy we would like to correct.

We have recently invested more than €6.5 million in building a state-of-the-art rehoming centre in Dublin and hope to rehome approximately 1,000 dogs each year in Irish homes. Our aim is to try to rehome Irish dogs into Irish homes and not just straight to Britain, as suggested in your feature article. We want to create the best possible chance of rehoming for all our dogs and on occasion we may decide it is best for them to be rehomed out of Britain from one of our 17 rehoming centres.

Since we opened the doors to our new rehoming centre on November 4 (for which you kindly gave us front page coverage next day with a photograph of Amy Huberman with two of our puppies) we have rehomed 106 dogs to Irish homes. We are striving to raise the profile of rehoming Irish dogs here and have invested hugely in trying to do this. We have invested €5.2m in a national neutering campaign since 2005, neutering on average 12,500 dogs per year. This, along with work by other animal welfare organisations, has seen the Irish stray dog figure drop significantly. We will continue to work to bring this figure down.