AN ANIMAL WELFARE charity has reacted to a shocking video circulating of a horse colliding with a car on a busy road.

The footage from a road in west Dublin shows a number of people riding horses, while others are driving traps led by horses. One horse crashes head first into a car, after the trap driver loses control. The horse survived.

Martina Kenny, co-founder of My Lovely Horse, a leading animal rescue charity, says it’s “not a one-off” and called for a dedicated animal welfare policing unit to be established.

“It’s stressful for anybody to watch, but mostly really stressful for that horse, especially, and drivers and passersby and anybody on a bike,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.

“To see that coming for you, it’s got to be pretty bad.”

Kenny said she was told there was a vet on the scene – “but it still happened, and it’s still very dangerous”.

“Obviously there’s not that many (horses) out every single say, but you do see races going on at 5 and 6 in the morning on the Naas road, or the main country roads.

“Something has to be done because the other day somebody could’ve been killed and the horse could’ve been killed,” she said.

“The damage was pretty bad anyway as it was.

“The pain that the horse must be in.”

Kenny asked: “Are we waiting for people to just die?”

She said that such a large number of horses and traps shouldn’t be allowed on main roads and that a crackdown is needed to effectively enforce laws around the treatment of animals.