Footage of Cruelty and Abuse of Horses in Kildare set to be revealed by RTÉ Investigates

In a major new investigation to be broadcast this Wednesday and Thursday night on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player, RTÉ Investigates examines the Irish and European horse industries.

Using hidden cameras, RTÉ Investigates exposes the abuse horses can suffer after they leave the spotlight.

Serious animal welfare abuses and cruelty have been uncovered in the treatment of horses that are being sent for slaughter at the country’s only licensed equine abattoir.

The behaviour was filmed in a building (a lairage) used by Shannonside Foods Ltd in Straffan, where the company keeps horses before they are brought to the kill room. Footage, captured by RTÉ Investigates, shows the routine mistreatment of the animals and will be aired as part of a special documentary tomorrow night on RTÉ One.

The research focused in particular on a lairage shed where official Department of Agriculture inspectors do not have a remit to regulate or inspect. In this shed, the animals are held and screened in the days leading up to their slaughter.

RTÉ hidden cameras caught the routine abuse of animals. The abuses included ill-treatment of dying horses. Viewers can see horses being whipped and struck with long lengths of plastic piping, including being hit around the head. In another example, a horse is filmed struggling for hours before it fell, and tried to get up many times. The only attention the horse got was the illegal use of a pitchfork in its side to try and force it up. After hours of struggling, it died. It was physically dragged out of the shed the next day.

In Ireland, RTÉ Investigates analysed data which allowed, for the first time, to profile the background of horses that were sent for slaughter. It has never been possible to fully see the link between the racing and slaughter industries until now.

The data allowed RTÉ Investigates journalists to track back and identify thousands of horses that passed through Ireland's only licensed horse abattoir. Two-thirds of the horses were thoroughbred racers, competitors who between them had raced more than 3,000 times, earning their owners more than €1.5 million on tracks across Ireland, the UK and France as well multiples of that for punters.

The Department of Agriculture said the lairage (holding shed) where secret filming took place was not part of the approved premises over which they have jurisdiction, but that all “evidence of illegal activity”... “will be appropriately investigated”.

The wide-ranging investigation will be revealed in a hard-hitting hour-long documentary, RTÉ Investigates: Horses - Making a Killing to be broadcast this Wednesday night, 12 June at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and in an additional special report on Prime Time on Thursday night at 9.35pm on RTÉ One.