Mr. Nicky Hartery:

I will take some to start with, and I will give the more difficult ones to Mr. Kavanagh. Certainly I re-echo what was said about the equine centre in Johnstown, and it is the priority on our list because there was a very serious concern early this year with influenza, and that was managed very well by different groups within our organisation, the IHRB and the equine centre. One begins to understand when one has potential crises on one's hands how fit-for-purpose the equine centre is. The Minister knows it, and I think he is a big supporter of the redevelopment of Johnstown.

Senator Lawlor lives very close to the Curragh and from an operating point of view, significant changes have occurred there. We are pleased with the changes that have occurred. From an operations point of view, we are looking forward to a very strong 2020 in the Curragh. In terms of the investment and the private investors who have put €36 million into the project, we and HRI did matching funds as the committee will be aware. The total cost of the project was €81.8 million. The submitted budget figure was €73 million. A number of items were added back, which was necessary, and that would probably have brought it up to €75 million or €76 million. Then one had inflation adjustments, and that tells one where the gaps are in funding and so forth. We have some work to do in that space among ourselves and with the private investors, but we are very pleased with where the Curragh sits currently from an ongoing operational point of view and so forth and we are happy with the changes that have occurred there with the Curragh board.

On the private venture, we certainly have been engaged, and as Mr. Kavanagh is the person who has engaged in that process, I will let him speak about it. He spoke about the southern model we looked at, but thought has gone into it around an American-type model where one trains on track and so forth and maybe he will explain some of that as well.

There are a lot of young trainers coming up in the business, and some of them who started ten years ago are quite large today. One is going to have that evolution going on in the industry where change is happening. A number of them were mentioned. I think as long as the quality stays up there, it will be good for the industry, but the whole thing for me is maintaining the quality, so that when we go abroad to compete, we compete very favourably, which we have done for many years. We need to continue to do that.