Mr. Denis Duggan:

I might just clarify this because the Deputy may have confused a couple of matters. We are involved in a tender exercise ourselves to secure an e-passport solution. It is not that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine has tendered for it. We are doing that ourselves to secure a supplier. Within our tender contract documents, which are publicly available through the e-tender portal, we have estimated the value of that to be €3.5 million, so that is where that figure comes from.

Separately, in the context of what the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine tendered, in February 2022, the Department tendered for three sets of services that had traditionally been undertaken by Horse Sport Ireland.

In February 2022, the Department of agriculture tendered for three services which traditionally had been undertaken by Horse Sport Ireland, HSI. We won the tender for national breeding services. Dr. Egan and her team are directly involved in the administration and provision of those services.

The second tender was in three lots which was stud book services for the Irish sport horse, Irish sport pony, Irish draught, Irish cob and the Irish part-bred cob. They were separated into three individual lots and we won those tenders. The third tender was for international marketing, which, as the Deputy pointed out, was won by the Irish Horse Board, IHB. The previous board had agreed to take a judicial review, but that was abandoned in December 2022.