Apologies all, but I didn't want to completely hijack Kid's thread, having partially done so already!
Midori, THIS will explain what I was speaking of wrt Irish pounds. That was about 4 years ago, and after a few months of fighting, thanks to dear Bernie of Ireland's Alliance For Animal Rights (AFAR) and subsequently the local Green party candidate, a lot of bloody hard work and rivers of tears, we got that new pound built and it's management DO cooperate with rescue.
Needless to say, there's still a long, long way to go. At that time, quite possibly still now, there were some "closed pounds" where the public were not allowed in. Once a dog went in there the only way he came out was in a black plastic bin-bag, no matter how young or how nice he was.
I was seriously ill at the time I got the good news on Meath's new pound, attributed in part to the stress of what I was doing at the time, with this campaign, getting dogs out of Irish pounds and over to the UK and making lots of enemies along the way as I was considered by some to be rocking the boat. That good news had a remarkable effect on my recovery rate though, I'm sure of that!