Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

In greyhounds. I am sure that is the widest possible definition but it is 10,000 people. Our figures show €0.5 billion of turnover in the rural economy. That is the figure we have. That is the basis for justifying any State intervention in the sector. The chairman has already said, and it is true to say, that if the sector did not need State support, it would not be given it. That is a given.

Against the background of concerns about income dropping and other concerns, the Minister commissioned Indecon to produce a report on the sector. It was published in 2013. There was a range of recommendations in it, including on governance, regulation and the financing of the industry. There was recognition that something had to change in terms of financing the industry. It was a long report. There were three main pillars to the recommendations on improving finances. One was that the board would have to dispose of assets because it was burdened with a significant debt that was eating up resources that might otherwise have been put into the sector. To an extent, this is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy because, in order to develop the sector, one needs to be putting money into prize money, stadiums and developing new products. However, if one's sources of funding, from the State or commercial revenue, dry up, it has a negative impact on that.

The first part of the Indecon report suggested something really had to be done about bringing down the debt. The only realistic way of making a really significant impact on that was the sale of assets. There were a few proposals in the report. They were not necessarily prescriptive but there were suggestions as to what assets might be sold. The second recommendation concerned the development of new streams of income and new products. The chairman and chief executive will know more about that than I do. They have already described progress in that regard. The third point was that there was a significant number of non-performing stadiums. It was recommended that something be done to calibrate the cost of those stadiums to the income deriving from them. That probably meant reducing the number of races and making sure the expenditure in non-performing racecourses did not exceed the income derived from them. Those are the three strands of that income piece.

The chief executive has described the kind of governance arrangement within the Department. Obviously, the board and chairman have their own responsibilities, and we have responsibilities also.

Reference was made to the presence of a departmental person on the board. That is an arguable point. It is not in the legislation. We will be drafting a Bill. We have begun to draft the heads of a Bill to respond to some elements of the Indecon report. The Bill will deal with some aspects of governance and deal with regulation. It might introduce mandatory penalties for offences such as doping. The board composition is a policy decision and I cannot elaborate on it. However, if the committee has a view on the composition of the board, we would all have to take it into account in the context of redrafting the legislation.