Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Surely the aim of the horse and greyhound industries is to reach a position where they are self-financing. Many of the stakeholders and sectoral players will indicate that as their objective. The State supported them through very difficult times when it had very little money to allocate to other very worthy projects and ventures in other areas.

If one speaks to somebody dealing with the bookmaking industry, they see lots of potential for that to be achieved. Deputy Cahill is right, it is not only the on-course bookmakers who have an essential role to play. They still take €3 or €5 bets whereas all those online boys want bigger bets. We have to protect the ordinary people who might just make the odd bet. The bookmakers in the streets and villages of this country are being wiped out. There are no bookmakers now in rural Ireland. They are being wiped out. They are very concerned that there should be a cut-off turnover point of about €2 million. How could one classify a little bookmaker in my village, which has a population of about 350 or 400 people, who disappeared as a result of economic circumstances, the same way as a high street bookmaker with a very high profile that is part of a chain of 60 or 70 bookmakers? It is important to differentiate those. Funnily enough, there are a few local jobs available in some of those small bookmakers. What happens is, as with everything in this country, we do not regulate for years and then when we do, it is overly prescriptive. We wipe everyone out with the big brush that rolls in front of us. That is important. There has to be a differentiation between the type of bookmaker involved. That has been made abundantly clear.

The Morris report is available and has raised some serious issues. We cannot put it under the carpet. If one speaks to people in the greyhound industry, they will say that in another couple of years, there will be no greyhound industry. That is what they will say. The owners are disappearing and there are huge questions about the integrity of the industry. It is a major issue. We can beat around the bush all we likes and dive for cover, but that is the big issue. That is glaring in the report and it has to be tackled.

We will be watching carefully the heads of the greyhound Bill that will be coming forward. It should tackle this once and for all. There has to be zero tolerance. There cannot be any nonsense of accepting little bits. There has to be zero tolerance in terms of integrity in order that every race is run true to form with no external influences on the performance of horses, dogs or anything else in the industry. That goes right through to the breeding. It has to be protected in an overarching way. That will give great confidence right across the board. The governance area also has to be tightened up.

Governance is important because we are giving huge sums of extremely scarce State money. We still cannot get a lot of resources that are required in other areas which have huge human costs and impact. Some people tell me that the estimate that 10,000 people are employed in the industry is such a gross over-estimation, it is almost laughable. I do not know. I know plenty about the point-to-point scene but I do not know about dogs, except that people are foolish enough to bet a few bob and in less than 30 seconds they lose all their money. That is all I know, but, stupidly, I have probably done it. That happens.