Mullingar Autos (Co.Westmeath)

“Here at Mullingar Autos we pride ourselves in offering you a brand New Škoda Destination shopping experience. We are situated at the Dublin Bridge in Mullingar, where you can enjoy a panoramic view of the Town from The Royal Canal – just feet away.” At first sight, Mullingar Autos is a largely blameless business, but we’re listing it because its Brand Manager (according to a page on the website with the amusing URL /meet-our-stuff/) is Jim Bourke, a long-term and committed foxhunter. You don’t get to be so senior unless you own the company, the rest of the senior staff don’t care what you get up to, or they don’t know what you do when not at work. On the former, the Mullingar Volkswagen ‘About Us’ page states that six of the twelve members are called – Bourke. Do they know about Jim’s hobby of hunting wildlife? The former Fianna Fail town councillor appeared several years ago in a Westmeath Examiner photograph showing him on horseback during a Westmeath Hunt outing. He sponsored Westmeath Foxhunt’s “2023 Puppy Show”: a photograph published in the Westmeath Topic newspaper showed him handing over the trophy for the “Best Working Bitch”, this – remember – in a country where foxhunting is still shamefully legal and where terriermen use spades and shovels to dig out terrified foxes that are then attacked and killed by ‘working’ terriers. Foxhunting is largely unremarked on in the Republic of Ireland, but the Westmeath Hunt has featured fairly regularly over the last two decades: in 2007, the Irish Independent reported that there was a probe into allegations that a rope was tied to the leg of a fox that was pulled out of a burrow and fed alive to hounds; a 2011 Farmers’ Journal report told of how 16 mounted followers of the Westmeath hunt, along with 29 hounds, found a fox that was caught and “chopped; a disturbing video filmed during a Westmeath Foxhunt in February 2015 shows a hunter calling his horse a c***, a hunter whipping her horse five times, and a horse falling backwards into a ditch. A Westmeath Foxhounds hunt report in the The Irish Field documented the obscene ritual of cutting off the tails and tongues of foxes: ”Terriers were some time in coming as followers were the wrong side of the wind for hearing. A quick dig followed and 2 foxes were dispatched. Eamon had a brush for Clarissa and a fox’s tongue which he intends pickling in vinegar to cure warts and draw thorns.” If you’re pro-wildlife then no matter how good the car, is someone who condones or enjoys foxhunting really the person you want sitting next to you on a test drive?