Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the prize money, it is very important that we keep the level of prize money we have because we have managed to attract major owners from other countries to keep their horses here and there is a huge benefit from that. The quality of racing here has improved dramatically and that obviously boosts attendance etc. There was a time when we struggled to win two or three races in Cheltenham or Aintree; now, we win the majority of our races there. Our level of prize money is important. If you look across the waters at the UK, especially in the national hunt scene, which is in a very poor place, the owners are deserting it in droves. The prize money here is a lot of it. Some people say that the big owners get the lion's share of prize money but they go to the store sales and they buy the winning point-to-pointers, and pay very big prices for them on a lot of occasions. Therefore, the money filters down. It might not filter down in the prize money. We could see the prize money going to the likes of J.P. McManus and Rich Ricci but they are often investing hugely. There was a sale of point-to-pointers in Cheltenham last week and the vast majority were Irish horses. Most of them come back here to race and that is as a result of the infrastructure we put in place. When something is going well, we definitely do not want to interfere with it and I know the Minister is not going to.

The other question I ask, and I have not heard it mentioned for a while, is on harness racing. If you think back to the previous committee here, the association was lobbying very hard to get seed funding to establish harness racing. Is that still on the Minister's radar, has it gone off the boil, or what is the situation with it?