Mr. John Moloney:

In regard to the workings of the board, I served on the board of the Irish Horseracing Authority, IHA, for five years and I am serving my second term on the board of HRI. I have seen a considerable amount of the workings of the board. The board works very well. I have served under two chairmen: Mr. Denis Brosnan, who served the industry for more than 20 years and did a wonderful job with great commitment, and Mr. Joe Keeling, who has now taken over and who has a keen interest in racing and spends much of his time working for the racing industry.

The HRI board works extremely well and the subcommittees are very important to the workings of it, because people would not be able to give the amount of time required if the board were trying to look after everything.

The fixtures committee is very successful. Racecourses have two members on it and it is proposed to reduce this to one member. As our chief executive said, if one racecourse representative were unable to attend a meeting, we would have no representative, and therefore it is very important that we have two members. The fixtures committee comprises HRI members and representatives of the trainers, owners, breeders and the turf club, constituting a cross-section of people. Fixtures are allocated to racecourses on that basis. It has worked very well over the years and there are 349 fixtures. The programmes committee is similar to the fixtures committee, usually meets on the same day and is very effective. There is also a working committee for the programmes. All facets of the industry prepare the programme for a three-month period, and this is submitted to the programmes committee for clarification. We usually make some changes to it before publishing it.

The media rights committee has been very successful down through the years. Media rights are the most important income source of Irish racecourses. It is being proposed that media rights be confined to members of HRI. We have secured a very good media rights deal with SIS, Satellite Information Services, up to 2018 and have another deal with At The Races. These deals are very important sources of funding for racecourses because, as our chief executive stated, without those funds we would not be able to continue to improve our facilities and ensure they are suitable for the patrons. The HRI board is speaking to racecourse representatives about introducing a new capital development fund. The proposal has been very well received by our racecourses. The majority of racecourses have spoken to HRI, and I hope there will be funding for a further capital development fund on racecourses within the next year.