NO less than four separate agencies of the State had to painstakingly piece together just who was responsible for throwing 12 carcases – eight horses and four cattle – off a 300ft high clift at Baltard, Doonbeg. The rotting remains were discovered in April 2014, sparking off a lengthy – and no doubt, costly – investigation.

This week, 65-year-old farmer Martin Gerald Foley of Lislanihan, Kilkee, pleaded guilty at Ennis Circuit Court to a single charge of disposing of waste likely to cause environmental pollution at dates unknown between April 2013 and March 2014. He will be sentenced on April 23rd next. DNA tests were conducted on the dead animals in a bid to discover more about them and an oceanographer consulted to determine whether they had been washed ashore or not.

Kilrush Gardaí, the ISPCA, Clare County Council and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, were all involved in the grim investigation which again highlights the need for a more robust system of equine identification to be put in place.

Non-compliance with equine identification is a nationwide scourge when it comes to tracking those responsible for cast off, injured and neglected animals.

Cork breeder Anthony Collins is currently working on one of those rare ideas – the workable kind!

Simplicity often belies brilliance and this simple idea has its origins in the systems already up and successfully running across our livestock divisions in cattle, sheep and pigs.

Collins advocates a cheap equine ID card, registering every equine born within seven days, linked to its equine premises number. All foals must be microchipped. Anyone who does not comply is referred to the Special Investigations Unit of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine straight away.

For the price of not much more than a cup of coffee, this simple equine ID card could ensure lifelong traceabilibilty and every equine would have, at least, factory value. Breeders and owners could then go on to get their animals passported with their breeding recorded, etc.

Compliance is key but this has the potential to put some real teeth into both the Department’s equine central database and the equine registration premises, which seems to have stayed static at 20,000 for as long as I can either recall or find online.

More importantly, it could help put an end to the current nonsense of unwanted horses being allowed starve to death in a country of plenty like ours and nobody brought to book for it.

Meanwhile, our State forks out endless millions trying to deal with a problem that paints a disturbing picture of all of us.