COUNTRYSIDE ALLIANCE IRELAND WINS FIRST ROUND OF
COURSING LEGAL BATTLE


Countryside Alliance Ireland has won the first round of its legal battle against Direct-Rule Minister Angela Smith's personal crusade to ban a number of traditional country sports in Northern Ireland.

In October the Minister, who is a former employee of the League Against Cruel Sports, banned organised coursing when she refused to grant a license to permit Northern Ireland's coursing clubs to net hares for their traditional coursing events. Shortly before Christmas the Minister rocked Northern Ireland's entire country sports community when she announced plans to ban all forms of hunting Irish Hares.

Countryside Alliance Ireland and their partners, Dungannon and District Coursing Club, successfully sought leave for judicial review of the minister's biased decisions in Belfast's High Court on Thursday 15th January. They have alleged that the minister acted on personal prejudice by ignoring all the relevant scientific evidence and failed to follow established democratic processes.

After the hearing, Ronan Gorman Chief Executive Countryside Alliance Ireland said the hunting community was delighted that Mr. Justice Girvan agreed former League Against Cruel Sports employee Angela Smith had a case to answer.

He said: "With all of Northern Ireland's leading Irish Hare ecologists against her, overwhelming cross-community political opposition to her plans and over three thousand written objections to her proposals, today's legal decision is no surprise. Now that we have been given leave for a judicial review of Angela Smith's decision to ban coursing with muzzled dogs, without any supporting scientific evidence, or indeed even proper consultation, we look forward to stopping this personal crusade. We will be back in the High Court on 2nd February seeking leave to instigate further legal action to prevent Northern Ireland's Minister for Prejudice banning other forms of Irish Hare hunting.


Countryside Alliance Ireland has built a formidable reputation on standing up for country sports. We insist that every government minister acts fairly and impartially and consults all interest parties properly. Angela Smith has not done this, she has acted in the most prejudiced and undemocratic way. We will not accept this and the entire rural community is united in their rejection of Angela Smiths disgraceful contempt for their views and the democratic process."

The leaders of Northern Ireland's main political parties have expressed concern and outrage at what Angela Smith is doing. Ian Paisley, David Trimble, former Environment Ministers Dermot Nesbitt & Sam Foster and other NI Assembly members from across the political divide, have written to the Secretary of State, expressing their astonishment at not having a proper consultation process. In their letters they made the point that consultation documentation detailing evidence for the proposal should have be issued by the Department and that this is an issue best dealt with local politicians, who can deal with it in an honest and impartial way.

Mr Gorman concluded: "Interestingly the Minister's former employers, the League Against Cruel Sports were quick out of the traps with a press release within hours of the High Court decision. However, perhaps they should have taken a little more time and got their legal facts correct. In their press release the London based group misunderstood and misrepresented the judge's decision, confirming what we have always suspected. Their narrow, prejudiced campaigns have no basis in fact, and that they have no understanding of coursing and hunting practices in Ireland, nor their importance to our rural communities."