Professor Patrick Wall:

On the issue of biosecurity, horses go racing and come back with infections. Runners will often perform below standard in races and it turns out they were sick. Members will read that in the newspapers. Those horses have potentially left a virus behind in the racecourse stable. The stables have to be appropriately cleaned and disinfected between race meetings but that does not always happen. When horses are looked after properly, have good nutrition, have their vaccinations are up to date and there is better husbandry, the risk is minimised.

The IHRA has links with other international harness racing federations and it is trying to benchmark itself against international best practice. There is another subset of horses that have nothing to do with the IHRA. These are road racers, sulky racers and urban horses owned by Traveller and settled Travellers. That is a huge concern for us. I acknowledge we are not discussing this today but I want to flag it for the committee because this group cannot be left out of its report. This has to be an area of concern for disease transmission, as Mr. Kavanagh highlighted, but this also has the potential, when there is adverse publicity associated with welfare, to reflect badly on the entire island, the land of the horse. There is a €1 million fund for urban horses and nobody has drawn down that money because the people in that subset are illiterate. They are not in the way of putting a proposal together. This is a separate subset that poses a risk for welfare and disease. A fund is not being spent because they do not have the wherewithal to draw it down.