Mr. Frank Nyhan:

In response to Deputy Colm Burke earlier, I said that part of the plan would be to reduce our dependence on State funding. Obviously, a significant part of that has to involve increasing attendances. The Chairman asked about the period from 2009 onwards, which was probably the nadir in terms of attendances. A number of things happened. Public practices and habits changed. People stopped going out as much as they did previously and started watching greyhound racing and other sports on television and elsewhere and there was a change in public perception of dogs and their treatment. We were probably slow to react to public perception. In the past few years, we have changed our emphasis entirely and moved to an emphasis on the welfare of the dog, an emphasis that has always been there but has never been properly publicised. Once we have established that in the minds of the general public, we can start tackling the question of attendance but we had to do that first and I hope we have done that.