Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What we are offering to the Irish Harness Racing Association is not just the potential access, pending compliance with the Indecon report, to the immediate seed capital requirement of €770,000. The Indecon report provides for the potential of a long-term strategic relationship between the Department and Irish Harness Racing Association. It is my personal belief that if the report had been published the day after we received it, any serious five-year strategic plan for the sector would have taken approximately that length of time to put together the appropriate documentation that we require to convince us that this is an organisation with which we can have a long-term strategic relationship. It cannot be written in a week or three weeks and it slightly worries me that there is now a headlong rush to say that we can do it in a condensed and short period of time without having the appropriate reflection or the level of professional input into compiling a five-year strategic plan for the industry, which is a serious document and not something that can be magically made in weeks. That is a strategic document that will take months to compile.

What we are offering here is the opportunity to engage with us because we can see that a public good can flow from this. We want to have that relationship with them.

There was no attempt to withhold the publication for any type of devious motivation. I genuinely urge the members and the harness racing association to view this document as the beginning. It is the first chapter of what can be a long relationship with the Department, one that would be mutually beneficial. One will not compile a five-year strategic plan in the period of time since that publication. It would be a challenge to do it in the number of months that have passed since the Department got the report. That is the type of document we are examining. It is a serious piece of work. If it is done properly it will lay a very solid foundation on which to build and to get to a point where we can replicate the potential that this industry is achieving in other jurisdictions, particularly in France. However, it is necessary to make haste slowly and to do it right. I have every confidence, given the enthusiasm of the people I have met and their business acumen, that they know a five-year strategic plan is not something that can be magicked up in a short space of time. What we are discussing here is the chance to open up a meaningful relationship. My officials and I are open to working with them in that context.