Kerry TD Danny Healy-Rae has called for a halt to criticism of the horse trainer Gordon Elliott over the picture of him sitting on a dead horse — saying the reaction has gone too far.
A horse is not a human at the end of the day, the TD said, and it was dead.
Mr Elliott is before the Referrals Committee of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) on Friday after a 2019 photo emerged of the Grand National-winning trainer sitting on top of a dead horse while on his mobile phone.
Danny Healy Rae said he is extremely concerned about the way the trainer is being treated.
“I’m very hurt at the way he’s been treated. Michael O’Leary at least had the courage to stick with him,” the TD said in reference to how some horse owners were pulling their horses from the Elliott yard.
“I was brought up by my grandmother to understand that if you don’t treat animals fairly, it will come back on you,” the TD said.
In 2006 the whole family were upset and involved in a search for the albino pony Peg, the beloved pony of his late father the TD Jackie, when she was stolen one evening in March when the late TD returned from the Dáil.
A reward was offered and gardai followed a line of enquiry. The 7-year-old was found two months later on the Cork-Kerry border dishevelled and shook-looking and tied to a field gate.
Danny Healy-Rae said it was not that he was dismissing people’s upset but a horse was not a human, and the horse in the photograph was dead.
People were reacting as if this were a picture involving a dead human being.
“You can’t make animals human. If there was one breath of life at all left in that horse, I would be the first to condemn what happened. But the horse was dead and this has gone too far.”
