Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and his officials for coming here.

We have all met the delegation from the Irish Harness Racing Association. I can confirm that they are very committed and hardworking. Their project is going places but they need seed capital to make things happen.

I am struck by the fact that the IHRA seems to be the poor relation to the other sectors that are so well funded and affluent, which is an issue that concerns my party.

I have spoken to the harness racers about their little projects to discourage people in the Traveller community, in the inner city and elsewhere from sulky racing on the roads and to direct what could be quite a dangerous activity into something which is properly regulated and properly done and has potential and a future. There is tremendous effort on their part to try to do that and I wholly support anything that could be done to put a seed fund in place for them. It would be more than disappointing if Horse Racing Ireland and the other sectors were to get such a huge amount of funding while the IHRA is left out again. That would be just unacceptable. I understand that it is looking for an initial sum of €600,000 or €700,000 as seed capital to get up and running and going. It would reflect society's sense of responsibility to people who are doing the right thing to allow them get themselves going and to ensure they are regulated properly.

We have had Horse Racing Ireland and Bord na gCon in here before this committee. We have had rows with them, generally over how things are run and operated. I know that the Minister and others have acknowledged the difficulties, to put it mildly, that exist in these organisations. Situations like the one we saw recently involving the doping of dogs keep coming up all of the time. There is a sense of despair. I spoke to a number of people in that industry the other day and they were still of the view that little is changing. It is to be hoped the Bill will go some considerable way towards regulating and putting some kind of shape on matters. Many people are very fearful, however, and I look for the Minister's reassurance that the greyhound Bill will bring a very firm hand to this when it goes through. People are at their wits' end and the organisation has really fallen into disrepute. We need to take a grip of this situation and handle it properly.