Councillor rages after death of horse in incident of “horrific animal cruelty” in Kilkenny

The incident occurred on Hebron Road in Kilkenny.

Kilkenny-based Fianna Fáil Councillor Andrew McGuinness took to Facebook to express his anger at the death of a horse in a sulky crash in the city earlier this month. CCTV footage posted by McGuinness on his Facebook page (which can be seen here – some viewers may find the footage upsetting) shows the horse crashing into a stop sign at speed, with the sulky driver being flung onto the road and landing a number of yards away. McGuinness said that the horse died as a result, while the driver, who is tended to by a number of people in the aftermath of the incident, was taken to hospital as a result. In a post on his Facebook page on Monday, McGuinness called for authorities to clamp down on laws that ban sulky racing and lamented the fact that despite the fact that abuse of the laws has been highlighted, it appears to have gotten worse. According to KCLR, to whom McGuinness spoke about the incident on Tuesday, McGuinness said that he wrote to Transport Minister Shane Ross about the issue, but was not very happy with the reply, which stated that he (Ross) did not intend to amend the laws that are in place. You can read McGuinness’ Facebook post in full below: Another display of horrific animal cruelty in Kilkenny. This took place on the Hebron Road just at McDonald's. Not only has it resulted in a dead horse but it could also have caused a serious accident on the Ring Road and the driver (who appears to be very young) is lucky to be alive! This is not culture! It’s downright cruelty and abuse and a complete lack of regard for the law and the safety of road users. We have created laws to ban sulky racing, we have highlighted all of the abuse through the local media and we have raised it publicly with the guards on numerous occasions and it only seems to get worse! We need to see prosecutions, horses taken away from those who cannot or will not care for them properly, these unregulated and unchecked carts banned off the road altogether, underage banned from using horses at all on public roads. We need to see a willingness from the authorities to deal with it and a clamp down on all the sites scattered around Kilkenny where horses are dumped in fields and areas taken over and turned into makeshift ranches (e.g. Hebron House) and not a single penny spent on any horse project until every community takes full responsibility for a problem that has gotten way out of control. There is a big difference between culture and torture and so far all I’m seeing is torture!