Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Renua Ireland) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the representatives from the Irish Bookmakers Association and Horse Sport Ireland. I am particularly pleased to welcome them because my father was a bookmaker for about 40 years. He had a small retail office and I worked with him at greyhound tracks and at pony racing around the country. It is an issue close to my heart. I have been involved in showjumping since I was four years old.

I congratulate Horse Sport Ireland. I think Jumping in the City was a fantastic success and I was delighted to attend the final in Shelbourne Park. This was an excellent collaboration with Bord na gCon. To give credit, where credit is due, it was a real success which I hope will be replicated in the future. I have no doubt that it will.

There has been a lot to celebrate in equestrian sports in the past few years. Bertram Allen, the name keeps coming up, is literally a 19 year old whippersnapper from Wexford who is ranked seventh place in the world.

He is largely ignored by the domestic media, which is a real shame. Bertram Allen is a role model; his work ethic and professionalism are a credit to his family. He is a credit to the work of Horse Sport Ireland and Showjumping Ireland. It is worth noting that Horse Sport Ireland's social media work is excellent because many organisations get it badly wrong. I follow its Twitter and Facebook accounts which are constantly updated.

I would like to concentrate on the owners of top level showjumping horses. The real problem is that the availability of such horses is unpredictable. We know that one of the top Irish riders who competed at the World Equestrian Games last summer had his entire string of horses pulled from him earlier this year, with just 24 hours notice. We are relying on foreign overseas investors in showjumping horses that we are expecting to bring us to the World Equestrian Games, the Olympic Games and so on. I would love to see a plan being put forward to incentivise people to invest in Irish horses on behalf of our riders. It would not be rocket science to put in place tax incentives to encourage the diaspora in London and the United States to invest in horses. Frankly, I do not care whether they are Irish bred or otherwise because the first priority is to have our riders winning on the world stage. Horse Sport Ireland should be promoting and fighting to secure the best horses and this should be included in its budget submission. This would be a win-win strategy and potentially attract investment by the Irish abroad. It is something we need to do urgently.

I welcome the Investec sponsorship deal, which represents fantastic news, about which I would love to hear more. As I understand it, the sponsorship package will cover the team competing at the RDS and the FEI European Championships in Aachen in Germany this summer, both qualifier events for the Olympic Games. Is there an expiry date on this sponsorship deal? Is Horse Sport Ireland looking at other potential sponsors? This sponsorship deal represents really good news and I am delighted to hear about it. The Holy Grail is the Olympic Games and success breeds success. That Cian O'Connor won a bronze medal in 2012 was a huge cause for celebration and he was very unlucky not to quality last summer. I am confident, however, that the showjumpting team will qualify this year and congratulate the eventers who have already qualified for the Olympic Games. That brings me back to the questions of finding quality horses and those who own them; we cannot separate the two.

The work being done to improve the breeding programme is welcome. I know that this is an issue close to the heart of Professor Patrick Wall. I hope he will be more successful at it than he was at the Jumping in the City event, but I will not go there, as I do not wish to embarrass him before the committee. I would, however, like to hear about the timeframe for the breeding programme. This ties in with some of the questions asked by Senator Mary Ann O'Brien and Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív on the five and ten year benchmark. Is there room for the Army Equitation School which has no money to buy or retain good quality Irish horses? I hope that as we improve the quality of Irish bred horses, there will be a role for the school.

These are just a few of the issues I wish to raise that are very important.