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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

NOVEMBER 2005

Irish SPCA looks to a new era

KEENAGH, County Longford––When man bites dog, that’s news, so when Irish SPCA chief executive Helen Dolan hit and killed a stray dog with her sport utility vehicle on October 21, 2005, the incident swiftly became tabloid and television news all over Ireland.

Helen Dolan, Irish SPCA chief executive (Kim Bartlett)

Dolan did not discourage the publicity. Instead Dolan took the occasion to warn pet keepers to keep their animals secure during the Halloween season, when the Irish traditionally detonate fireworks to scare ghosts, mostly scaring dogs and cats instead. Dolan also dispensed tips about avoiding roadkills and finding lost dogs.


Hired in January 2005, Dolan brought to the Irish SPCA a global background in hotel management and fundraising for education, a lifelong love of dogs and horses, and no formal experience in humane work.In less than a year, Dolan’s flair for fundraising and publicity has rattled quite a few cages. Some elder Irish animal advocates grumble about Dolan’s rapid rise to national prominence. Others say she is just what animal welfare in Ireland needed––a charismatic young leader who isn’t afraid to spend money in order to attract it, seizing the opportunity for humane work in Ireland to grow with the fast-rising Irish economy.

Founded in 1949, the Irish SPCA is the national umbrella for 26 animal rescue centers at present, down from more than 30 at peak. Several former member societies have been disenfranchised or suspended in recent years for failing to meet Irish SPCA standards, and/or for violating humane policies, amid a bruising internal political battle over the longtime Irish SPCA policy of opposition to hunting.


The Irish SPCA headquarters, called the National Animal Centre, is an 80-acre former working farm at Derryglogher, near Keenagh, in the peat bog country between Ballymahon and Lanesboro.


The location could be described as the middle of nowhere, except that everywhere in Ireland is accessible within a day’s drive from anywhere else, and it is only 10 miles from Glasson, the traditional center of the Irish land mass.
The National Animal Centre includes 20 kennel runs, 20 cat accommodations, four stables for horses and donkeys, and considerable wildlife habitat.


As fox and bird hunters make seasonal use of surrounding properties, Dolan told ANIMAL PEOPLE, the targeted species tend to find their way to sanctuary at the National Animal Centre. The center also does wildlife rehabilitation.


Dolan supervises an office staff of seven, plus four fulltime animal care workers and four regional inspectors, who chiefly investigate cruelty complaints.


“We purchased the land from a supporter of the society at a very reasonable price with the help of a grant from the Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry,” former Irish SPCA chief executive Ciaran O’Donovan told Sean MacConnell of The Irish Times in June 2000.


“There has been a growing need over a number of years for a proper center for the organization,” O’Donovan added. “Our first need is for an area where we can bring animals when orders are issued in court for them to be handed over to us, after convictions for cruelty. This will be more than a national refuge,” O’Donovan promised. “We want to turn the farm into a major education center.”

The center formally opened in June 2000. The investment of more than six million euros to date, much of it borrowed, has been heavily criticized, but acquiring and constructing comparable premises for less money would be difficult in almost any developed nation. The new facilities are luxurious only by traditional Irish shelter standards, not by contemporary European and American standards.
The dog runs, for example, have the barred fronts that have been standard since the Middle Ages, instead of plate glass, which encourages dogs to look quietly out instead of reacting to scents and barking up a constant storm.
The limited volume of dog housing is bitterly denounced by some animal advocates who believe the Irish SPCA should be caring for at least 10 times as many dogs, but the location is too remote––pending major motorway development––to be appropriate for doing high-volume adoption.

Sarah Mortimer & kate Browne of Clare Animal Welfare, in front of their cubicle in the Clare Haven House office (Kim Bartlett)

Dolan sees the mission of the Irish SPCA as focused on setting standards, not on replicating the work of the regional affiliates, many of which are much better situated for doing adoptions. In addition, Dolan believes the Irish SPCA should emphasize sterilization and keeping animals in homes, not accommodating cast-offs at the expense of becoming unable to do education and outreach.


Progress––and opposition


The numbers of former pets entering Irish shelters and often being killed due to lack of adoptive homes have fallen fast in recent years, coinciding with the introduction of aggressive low-cost sterilization programs in many communities. Stray dogs and feral cats, though more abundant than in Britain, are seldom seen compared to the U.S., where pets are kept at about twice the Irish frequency.


Despite a recent Dublin SPCA proclamation that “more than a million” feral cats live in Dublin, the total Irish cat population based on human demographics and habitat availability appears to be not more than one million, of whom about 40% may be outdoors and free-roaming. The Irish dog population appears to be about 650,000.
Total shelter intake of dogs around Ireland has reportedly fallen from 32,850 in 1998 to circa 24,000 in fiscal 2005. Shelter dog killing declined slightly from 27,848 in 1997 to 27,570 one year later, then began a precipitous drop to as few as 18,000 in 2004, with a projected total of 16,000 in 2005.


Killing surplus racing greyhounds has markedly increased, however, with the collapse of the export market. The toll rose from about 4,000 circa 1998 to 14,000 in 2003, even as killing dogs for other reasons fell.


Exactly how many greyhounds are killed in shelters as opposed to other venues is unknown, but among 181 dogs killed in County Clare during one week of observation by Sandy Barron of the Irish Times in October 2000, 73 were greyhounds: 40%.


Past Irish SPCA board president Marion FitzGibbon, as the longtime most prominent critic of greyhound racing in Ireland, led the society toward direct opposition to the racing industry, unnerving some shelter operators who feared that opposing racing would mean a loss of government support.


But FitzGibbon was elected on a platform of maintaining uncompromising positions, including pushing a position statement that, “The Irish SPCA is in principle opposed to the taking or killing of wild animals, or the infliction of any suffering on them.”


Allegedly infiltrated and taken over by fox hunters who opposed the statement, the North Tipperary SPCA in May 1996 refused to endorse it. FitzGibbon told the North Tipperary SPCA to sign or resign.


After several years of continuing confrontation with the North Tipperary SPCA and other recalicitrant members, FitzGibbon was re-elected at the November 1999 Irish SPCA general meeting in Dublin, as members of the Irish Trust for the Protection and Care of Animals, Alliance for Animal Rights, Association of Hunt Saboteurs, and Campaign for the Abolition of Cruel Sports rallied in the street outside.


FitzGibbon in her acceptance speech opened another rift by asking the Irish Veterinary Union to back the Irish SPCA position of favoring lethal injection over the use of captive bolt guns to kill dogs. Irish SPCA affiliates had entered 1999 managing 16 of the 30 Irish dog pounds, but lost three contracts during the year when local governments refused to pay the added cost of using lethal injection.


Yet the Irish SPCA position prevailed: as of November 2005, 27 of the 30 pounds had instituted lethal injection, and County Wexford, one of the last holdouts, was under criticism from the Alliance for Animal Rights because it had allegedly failed to fulfill a pledge to go to lethal injection.


The Irish network


Much of Dolan’s work involves reuniting the Irish SPCA network after the battles of the past decade.


FitzGibbon heads Limerick Animal Welfare, an Irish SPCA member society that she cofounded in 1983 with Beverly Wolf, no longer involved in the organization.


Operating for 22 years as a no-kill fostering network, Limerick Animal Welfare opened a thrift shop in 2001, to help raise funds, but has never had a shelter.


“At any one time we care for about 50 dogs and 30 cats,” explains the Limerick Animal Welfare web site. “As we have no sanctuary, our dogs are boarded in kennels from Oola, in County Limerick, to Mountshannon in County Clare, and Doneraile in County Cork. Our cats are housed in Newport, County Tipperary. Our ultimate goal is to have a sanctuary where all of our animals will be boarded in the same place.  We have purchased 25 acres in Kilfinnane, in County Limerick, where we plan to build our sanctuary.”


The construction is to be done in phases, FitzGibbon explained to ANIMAL PEOPLE, over a copy of the layout.  As the most urgent need is for isolation kennels, to handle sick dogs, those will be built first. The rest of the projected double-winged shelter will be added as funding permits.


Operating without a shelter is relatively normal for Irish humane societies. Clare Animal Welfare cofounders Sarah Mortimer and Kate Browne have just a closet-sized office space in one corner of the industrial park headquarters of Clare Haven House, a rescue network that assists battered women. Often Clare Animal Welfare fosters the pets of women who are aided by Clare Haven House.


Despite the lack of facilities, Clare Animal Welfare rehomes about 300 dogs per year, many of them through Dogs Trust of Britain. Clare Animal Welfare also promotes a neuter/return program for feral cats, rehomes cats through the Cheltenham Animal Shelter and Ash Animal Rescue in Britain, rehomes rabbits in cooperation with the Carrigoran Nursing Home in Newmarket, and has other cooperative arrangements with facilities for horses, goats, and small mammals. ––M.C.