Mr. Brian O'Connell:

The issue is whether resort casinos should be permitted. The County Tipperary venue is probably a very good example of a resort casino on an international and European scale and it would probably be useful to indicate what this is. As it has received planning permission, to a large extent, the aesthetic urban argument is now history. With regard to the benefits of a resort casino over those of a stand-alone casino, a resort casino merges activities; as such a unique site would no longer be created for the purposes of gambling, as it would be incorporated as a normal piece of entertainment in a much larger setting where there were diversions all the time.

The County Tipperary venue is set on a site of approximately 1,000 acres and is a very big development. It has a 350-bed resort casino hotel. A casino hotel differs from a standard hotel; while it has all of the tourist attractions of a standard hotel, it also contains as part of its core a casino floor. This is a segregated area on the basis that it is controlled. There is also an uncontrolled area, as well as many common areas which operate between them. There are also banqueting and function rooms. The industry which comes with it is associated with conferences. As all projects need a specific feature to identify them, in this case it is the fact that James Hogan, the architect of the White House, was born close by. He was one of the first Irish pure architects and a student of Thomas Ivory, the famous Cork classical architect. He designed the White House for Washington who intended it to be a banqueting suite to avoid it being characterised as a palace, in which every month 500 citizens of the United States would be banqueted. This never happened, but it was Washington's intention and the building was designed for this purpose. Our intention is to replicate the building as it was in 1829 when Hogan died. It will form an essential part of the resort casino and be one of its key theme areas.

The resort will also incorporate horse racing and Horse Racing Ireland has endorsed it. It was seeking an international racecourse to replace the three venues close by in County Tipperary with one major racecourse for Munster.

That is incorporated, with the support of Horse Racing Ireland, HRI, into the project. We also have Horse Sport Ireland, which has come into it on the equestrian side of horse sport. There will be an international scale venue for Horse Racing Ireland. Bord na gCon is also supporting it and there is a back-to-back arrangement with diversity, using the grandstand on one side for a greyhound track and on the other a horse racing facility. It is a diverse development that is modern and highly flexible. It is a resort development on the basis that all the infrastructure provided - the supply of water and sorting of drainage, for example - will be the equivalent of a small town in scale. That is what a resort casino is.