Robert Irvine: Auckland Council's compliance general manager on the $300 fines set to impact unregistered dog owners

Auckland Council's putting the hard word on unregistered dog owners.

The council is set to issue 5500 infringement notices over the next few days to dog owners who've failed to properly register their pets.

The council's general manager of compliance, Robert Irvine, says there will be a grace period - and people have the option to pay their registration fees to get their fines waived.

"If you're a responsible dog owner, we give you a discount - and there's also the early discount."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brian Bridge in Auckland's the Council's cracking down on unregistered
dog owners. Around five thousand, five hundred infringement notices will
be handed out over the coming days. They say it's
the first step to responsible dog ownership and will slap
owners with a three hundred dollars fine if they don't register.
The Council's General Manager of Compliance, Robert Irvine, is with me, Robert,

(00:21):
good evening.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hi, right, how are you going? Good?

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Thank you? So five hundred dog owners have not registered
on time? Do they pay the three hundred? If they
pay the three hundred dollars fine, do they then have
to still pay the two hundred to register as well?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yeah, so we'll work with them on that. Effectively, if
they pay the registration there's a chance that we could
waiver the infringement fine.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Ah okay, how what's the grace period?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Ah? Look, you know we want to obviously follow up
and we will chase up with them and if we
think it's within the month, we will be able to
actually get that response.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
If I'm being honest with you, I mean I've got
my dog registered, but I do put it off, and
I put it off and I put it off because
it's how much is it two hundred and something?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, the fees range. It ranges from seventy four dollars
through to about two hundred and thirty. And so if
you do get in early, there is a discount.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Right, I'm not one for early things. Two hundred and
thirteen dollars for a year for your dog registration? What
does that? Where does that go?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Yeah? Look, and again that's a max. Like I said,
it starts at seventy four dollars, where if you're a
responsible dog in a you know, we give you a discount,
and there's also the early discount. But effectively where that
goes is really around providing the services for animal management.
We provide a raft of services out there in terms
of protecting the public from roaming dogs and from effectively

(01:51):
you know, picking up strays and also any animals that
are left with us. It also, i guess, deals with
a lot of investigations that we do. There are unfortunately
dog attacks that we then have to go and investigate.
So a lot of this money from registration process goes
to dealing with those issues.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
It's a shame because it's must be a very expensive
business to be and I suppose it is.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's it's you we're
a light city, so you know, we have a lot
of issues.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
How often are you putting dogs down?

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Look, it's it's unfortunately, you know, due to the amount
of roaming and you know, there's been quite a few
issues in terms of I guess post COVID where we've
seen a significant rise and amount of dogs and also
a lot of unwanted dogs. So we impound roughly eight
thousand dogs a year and really unfortunately around half of

(02:45):
those are actually euthanized.

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Right, it's a shame. But is it not odd that
so you're a lawa abiding you're an early payment even
with the dog registration. Why is it that dog owners
have to subsidize bad you know, good dog owners subsidized
bad dog owners. Should it not just come from a
general council pool of unruling behavior.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Look, it's not all all goes towards So there is
balance between the two in that something we do strike
when we look at how much we're going to be
charging for registration. So it's basically a contribution towards overrighting services. So,
like I said, it's not all going towards and there
is a general balance and that's not something we do
look at when we're setting the registration freeze every year.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Somebody's just text don very quickly before we go to
say can you ask the council why they change the
dog's registration number every time you apply for a new
registration and don't just allocate a number to your dog
for life.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Look at something that's always something to be looked at.
You know, it's part of a you know, we do
charge it's an annual fee. So in terms of that registration,
that's just part of the process where you know, so
how we identify who's actually paid, you know, through the
different tag and again it's an annual fee that we charge,
so we're an annual process. For more from Hither Duplessy

(04:07):
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