Editorial: Alliance MLA needs to clarify his plan to ban hunting with dogs in Northern Ireland

​A plan to ban hunting with dogs might have much wider implications.

As we report on page four, the Countryside Alliance say that the plan, from the Alliance MLA John Blair, would represent a “fundamental restriction” on the activity and could leave people involved in field sports at risk of prosecution.

If this sort of assessment is wrong, then Mr Blair should come forward and explain why it is wrong. The News Letter has previously asked him about such concerns and has done so again ahead of today’s newspaper. The legislation is in its early stages, but it is important that any impact on shooting is established now, so that politicians can make an informed decision on the matter.

Obviously, the onus is on the MLA behind the proposal to outline his response to such criticisms. Mr Blair might indeed want sweeping legislation that does in fact impact on shooting – that is plainly his perogative. But he should defend it if so.

The DUP is right to allow its own representatives to make up their own minds on the issue, which is – you could argue – a matter of individual conscience. Sinn Fein is not making its own position clear, and nor is the Ulster Unionist Party.

This newspaper believes that the ban on hunting in Great Britain has been a disaster and that both Northern Ireland and the Republic are right to continue to allow it. But the ancient tradition is at risk here.

Tony Blair’s legislation in the 1990s displayed both a naivete about the fundamentals of nature, and the ruthless way in which some animals hunt and kill others as part of a pre-human order of things that we as a species cannot change – no matter how advanced we become. It also inflicted social damage on popular rural social traditions and customs. In other words, metropolitan rulers adjudicated on countryside pursuits.