Wandering horses cost City Council Û90k in year

By Declan Tierney

The scourge of wandering Traveller horses has cost Galway City Council a whopping €90,000 over the past year in fees for rounding the animals up.

And it remains a major headache in Galway city with the Ballybane area plagued by the problem on a weekly basis, while the problem of wandering horses on the Headford Road has been described as a fatality waiting to happen.

The problem is particularly acute at weekends when community wardens are off duty, but even if they were monitoring the situation, it still takes a major effort to impound wandering horses. The City Council have to employ the services of a professional firm who bring the horses to a pound in County Kilkenny.

Over the past week, there have been a dozen wandering horses in various estates and playgrounds in the Ballybane area. Some were let loose in the grounds at Merlin Park and it resulted in a number of them destroying gardens of two houses at nearby Merlin Lane.

Independent councillor, Terry O’Flaherty has described the situation as intolerable and called for every horse to be electronically chipped so that the owners could be identified. She also asked that the owner of every horse be required to have ‘a passport’ for the animal.

“It is particularly bad on the East side of the city more so than any other part of Galway. They are causing a lot of damage as well as intimidating residents and a system should be in place whereby the owners are immediately identifiable,” she said.

Cllr O’Flaherty said that it was costing €1,000 to round up every wandering horse and last year alone it cost the City Council €90,000 in fees to impound stray horses. “How someone has not been killed with wandering horses on the Headford Road is a mystery,” she added.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.