Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To be honest, I would be surprised if there was not a representative of racehorse owners on the board. I think that if we use this legislation to require the owners to have priority status on the board without requiring others to have the same status, it will provide an imbalance. We have to trust that HRI, as the broad representative body it will be, will make sensible decisions and will answer for those decisions. That is a fairly consistent theme I am advancing throughout this legislation. As a publicly accountable body that administers a large amount of money, HRI has to make all sorts of decisions about media rights and fixtures, etc. I was going to say "fixtures and fittings", so I must be thinking about flooding. Quite frankly, we need to trust HRI to get on with the job rather than prescribing to it exactly who it should be appointing by picking out and prioritising representative bodies. While I take the point made by Deputy Ferris, I would be surprised if there was no representative of racehorse owners on this committee. I think we should trust HRI to make balanced and sensible decisions and to stand over them.