Speaking in the Dáil last Thursday, during a debate on People Before Profit’s bill to ban hare coursing, Minister of State Niall Collins claimed that a 2022 independent economic report found that hare coursing contributes around €70 million to the economy.
However, no reference to this claim can be found in any published report. At Leaders' Questions in the Dáil today, Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach about Minister Collins’ claim, but the Taoiseach said that he is also unaware of a report containing this claim.
Paul Murphy said:
“In the debate last week on my bill to ban hare coursing, Minister Niall Collins said:
In 2022, an independent economic analysis estimated that coursing contributed approximately €70.7 million annually to the Irish economy…
“The same figure was repeated on the airwaves by other Fianna Fáil TDs and by the Irish Coursing Club.
“But the report with this claim has proved impossible to find. When asked by The Journal, the Irish Coursing Club refused to provide the report, claiming that it has to be presented to their members first - four years after it was written.
“At Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil today, I asked the Taoiseach about the report, but he said that he hasn’t seen it either.
“There have been some references to a 2021 report by Jim Power, The Economic and Financial Significance of the Irish Greyhound Industry, as the source of the €70m figure. But in a February 2025 reply to a parliamentary question, Minister for Agriculture Minister Heydon referenced the Jim Power report, and said:
The report does not provide a separate figure for the economic value of the greyhound racing industry in the Republic of Ireland only or a breakdown excluding hare coursing.
“So we have a report, apparently produced in 2022, with an unbelievable finding of an economic value of over €70 million arising from hare coursing, but which, in the intervening four years, hasn't been published, meaning nobody can scrutinise it.
“Now we are just hours from the Dáil vote on the hare coursing Bill later this evening. The debate on the bill has been ‘informed’ by important claims by a Junior Minister and Fianna Fáil TDs that cannot be substantiated, not even by the Government itself. This is bizarre.
“This mystery report, if it exists, needs to be published before this evening’s vote so that TDs can assess for themselves what is the supposed economic benefit of continued cruelty to Irish hares.”