Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will group my questions, as there are a few areas I wish to touch on. A point was made about board composition and the Minister's representatives having a thorough knowledge and some having a working knowledge. It is absolutely key that any representative of HRI understands the industry. As an industry, it can be a tight clique. It is hard to get that balance with a person who has the required knowledge yet is perceived as objective and unbiased and not from a certain camp. If we were to appoint somebody to the board who does not understand the basics of how the industry works and the importance of the industry to the country, it would be a waste of time. I concur with the views of the witness. It may be no harm to be more prescriptive than is provided for in the heads of the Bill.

The witness mentioned that some of the committees having outside members is beneficial. Some of the committees can have outside members. It is important to clarify that. I think Mr. Iceton was referring to the need for specialised chairpersons on occasion. Whatever about the chairperson being specialised, the ability to bring in outside expertise is very important. That is acknowledged particularly with regard to media rights and other areas. I will return to media rights later because the jockeys raised a valid point.

The fixtures committee is absolutely crucial. I concur with some of the points made. Perhaps I will touch on Ms Sharon Byrne's presentation later. I agree that the bookmakers have an integral role to play. In some ways there is much animosity in the industry and there can be much friction between the bookmakers' side and the other side, but it is in everyone's interest that we get an industry that works as well as possible. I am aware of what happened in Punchestown a couple of years ago when Morgiana day had as a sponsor a big bookmaker that put a large amount of money into it, and it had its biggest crowd in a number of years. The promotional expertise was brought in from the bookmaker's side. There was a clash the following year with the open meeting in Cheltenham. The bookmakers stood back from their sponsor because of that and everyone lost out. The Punchestown crowd was much smaller. It was an occasion on which the fixtures committee appeared to be acting a bit aloof. There is great merit in making sure the fixtures committee and the programme committee take on board all the other sides, including foreign elements that may come in.

On the trainer side, I commiserate with Mr. Dermot Weld on Vintage Crop, a great servant of his and to the industry. Reading through his submission, I noted that it focused very much on the funding element, which has been a key component. While this is the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which deals with the structures around how the industry operates, the betting tax is a matter for the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and, in particular, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan. The points made here have been noted and will feed into a larger debate.

Mr. Andrew Coonan made a presentation on behalf of the jockeys. Again, he referenced the funding issue. The Betting (Amendment) Bill passed Report Stage last week. I will get to that when I come to Ms Byrne's submission. His point that the jockeys deserve a place on the committee is well founded. The representatives of the Irish Stable Staff Association who appeared before the committee last week said likewise. Is everyone happy that the industry as it was in 2001, when we set up the HRI legislation, still has a representative board? Are we just arguing about who is represented and whether everybody is equally represented, or is there a sense that we need to get away from a representative board? I am just throwing out that general question. I take the point that jockeys need their own individual representation. I am conscious that Mr. Ruby Walsh and Mr. Michael Kinane are present. Not every jockey is lucky to be as skilled as those two individuals and to get the high-quality rides they have got down through the years. I am particularly mindful of the jockey who is totally dependent on the money for riding out in the morning and if he gets a win, it is a bonus, as opposed to supplementing his income. For the jockeys who are down the pecking order it is a tough life, because they have to make all the sacrifices and they get the same injuries as the witnesses. It is tough going and the career span in the industry is limited. It is an issue we need to be mindful of. Without our high-quality jockeys representing us around the world, we would not have the name we have in the industry.

Points were made about the regulatory body. I asked earlier if there are lessons to be learned from abroad in respect of integrity and all the areas of the regulatory body. The Bill is attempting to ensure the industry runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible and that we get good value for the money put in by the State. At the same time we cannot allow any change to take place which, down the line, would damage our integrity. Integrity is something one has and one can take it for granted, but when one loses it one does not get it back. By the time one realises it is lost, it can be too late. The points made in respect of integrity need to be borne in mind in any report we send back.

The media rights in respect of the jockeys are well founded. It is an extremely important committee. In her presentation Ms Sharon Byrne pointed out that €24 million of the fund comes from betting shops in Ireland and €30 million goes to SIAS and all the others for the media rights. There is as large a pot of money there. While we could spend all our time talking about the betting tax, there is an equally important amount of money on the media rights side, which it would be wrong to ignore or not to give it the same level of attention. I am conscious that most of what Ms Sharon Byrne said in regard to the bookmakers' industry was about betting shops. She stated that the number of betting shops had decreased from more than 1,000 to 992 and that turnover had decreased significantly. The elephant in the room is the fact that people have not stopped betting; they have just changed their mode of betting. Their iPads and iPhones are the new means of doing that. The Betting (Amendment) Bill, which extends the betting mode, passed Report Stage last week and hopefully will be enacted by the end of September. That Bill will give us a much broader mechanism to take in tax, something which should have been done some time ago. We can have a discussion when we have a proper system that measures equally everyone who lays a bet. We can also have a debate on the rates.

Is there any opposition to the point made about increasing the amount of racing at Dundalk? Again, that comes back to the fixtures committee and media rights. I expect it is in the interests of all the representatives to have racing. We have many horses in the country but not as many as in the height of the boom. Why has that not happened before now? I have heard before that we should have racing more than one night per week in the winter. If anybody has any views on that issue I would like to hear them.

The point made by Mr. Shane O'Dwyer that the industry never wanted to be dependant on State financing is a valid one. The changes Senator Paschal Mooney discussed, particularly the reduction from 2% to 1% by Brian Cowen in 2006, have left the industry in a situation in which the State is supplementing it.

The industry employs 17,000 people but has the potential to employ 25,000, the number it employed at its height. It creates economic activity in areas where there is very little other economic activity. When one is fighting for taxpayers' money one is competing with the hospitals, with schools and that is not the position that an industry of this size and calibre needs to be in. We need to get to a position where between the media and the different elements, we have an appropriate funding stream for the industry.