Brian Ó Domhnaill (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat. I welcome the Minister and his officials here today. Over the past few years cuts to expenditure have come under scrutiny in every Department, and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is no exception. One must scrutinise the overall expenditure on the horse and greyhound racing fund. Today we have an opportunity to do that. It is a huge sum, notwithstanding the employment that the sectors create, at 24,000 jobs, and their value to the Irish economy. The proposal here is to impose requirements on the taxpayer to fund an industry which is also a sport. Both the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, and Indecon in their reports raised serious questions about the viability of the fund and how it is spent. One can compare the €50 million available to the horse and greyhound racing fund with the €25 million available to the Irish Sports Council, which represents 57 national organisations, 32 local sports partnerships and 18 high performance sports at Olympic level. We saw some results of its work at the recent World Championships. The Irish Sports Council contends, as did the ESRI report, that it is very difficult to justify funding horse and greyhound racing while cutting the funding to it and our international athletes. An athlete who won a gold medal for Ireland at the recent World Championships, comes from the Minister's constituency. There has to be a balance.

According to the Indecon report, the horse and greyhound racing fund provides on average €179,000 per race meeting. I accept that these figures may be outdated because the report was published in 2004. None the less, at that time, for every person who attended those race meetings the fund provided €38.

The average subsidy from the fund is €7,100 per job in the industry. How important is the fund? Is it subsidising employment in the industry? Instead of placing more financial obligations on the taxpayer is there not a need to look at the online gambling issue as a way of generating money instead of placing the burden on the taxpayer? That burden should be transferred to the sector or to the gambling industry.

Due to the shortfall in gambling income as a result of people choosing to gamble online, would it not be better to gather money from online gambling rather than from the taxpayer? There are competing demands for funding from the Department's Vote and this expenditure might result in a reduction on funding for disadvantage area schemes and other departmental schemes.

I am not criticising the horse racing sector but I am asking questions today because this is the only opportunity I have to do so. This is not the only assistance provided by the taxpayer for the horse racing and greyhound sector. There have been tax breaks for the income from stallion fees since 1969 to the benefit of the horse racing industry. While I understand what the Minister is trying to achieve, since the Indecon report there may have been other cost-benefit analyses undertaken by Department on the overall expenditure under the fund and what has been the benefit to the punter and to the ordinary taxpayer. I am sure he has considered the option of how income could be generated from online gambling. I ask him to enlighten us as to what alternatives have been considered to fund the industry rather than asking the taxpayer to fund it or to have it competing with other demands on the Department's Vote.