Ms Geraldine Larkin:

There was a tradition quite some years ago of reducing activity levels during the winter period. There was an historical tradition of that happening. Nobody likes reducing the number of race meetings but, at the same time, there is a level of co-operation among industry stakeholders to improve and better the industry performance. That is the answer to the first part of the Deputy's question.

The second part of the Deputy's question related to key performance indicators. The key performance indicators have been built to analyse the profitability of the tracks, the subvention we are paying per meeting and per spectator, the level of sponsorship generated at track level, and the amount of Tote and commercial profits being made. Those key performance indicators have been running for 12 months now.

The analysis arising from them has been very useful in identifying different aspects of performance and what is good and bad on the various tracks. Different issues arise in respect of the ten IGB tracks and seven privately-run tracks and it gives us an opportunity to investigate them.

My priority for the next 12 months will be to see how much we can lift the KPIs. By targeting specific areas of weakness we hope to bolster the entire industry. Obviously, this is taxpayers' money and there is no guarantee that funding to tracks will continue in the long term. My priority is to address the weaknesses. On pulling the tracks up, every time one takes a track out there are repercussions for local industry and, while it might solve commercial issues, it might also severely undermine the dog population in an area. It is better to see if we can solve the non-performance of tracks and other issues. A key challenge, given that we are dependent on tracks, is the fact that the tracks are only open for some 16 hours per week.

We will go back to the Indecon recommendations and look at what else we can do in terms of alternative sources of income to support what happens on the tracks. We have completed a joint horse jumping event with Horse Sport Ireland under the Jumping in the City initiative, which was launched in Limerick and also takes in Cork and Shelbourne Park and was very successful. We are exploring other such options to help bring a completely different audience into greyhound stadia because it is a State resource which is available in key urban locations and which we should be utilising.