Mr. Bernard Caldwell:

Deputy Ó Cuív is gone but he asked earlier about how many should be on the board. I know it is a policy to reduce board numbers but I think whatever number it takes to have a good board, that is what one has. The current board contains representatives from the turf club, the owners, the breeders, stable staff, Northern Ireland representatives, the ITBM and the trainers. There is a total of 13 members. All of those groups are completely different. In no way can stable staff be compared to owners or breeders. We are a completely different group. There is no comparison with jockeys who are a different organisation and members of the industry. I think that will be a bit of a disaster if it happens. How many members should the board have? If it takes 12, 13 or another number, that is what we need. Everybody on that board, on which I sit, represents their own areas.

A question was asked about funding from a full betting tax. There is no doubt that the only way that racing can survive in the future is by increasing its betting tax. We have been pushing for that for a long time so ensure that racing continues to survive and be as competitive as it is. Irish horses are sought all over the world. At the moment, the Irish horse is being brought into China which is a huge market that will increase the amount of money coming into this country and bring Chinese owners in. We have owners here from all over the world. The committee should not forget that a number of years ago when things were bad in this country, it was the foreigners who came in, bought up our studs, redeveloped them and made them what they are today along with Coolmore Stud and all of those people. We have some of the best facilities in the world and we need to be able to maintain them. If we drop our standards, there are too many other people out there waiting to get in and it is very important that we keep that up.

Senator Mary Ann O'Brien asked me about the situation before 2001. I was not involved with stable staff before 2001 but I would have been familiar with what was going on in stable yards. Facilities for stable staff were absolutely dreadful in most tracks all over the country because the tracks did not have the money to provide proper shower units, proper toilets and proper canteens. Even the stable yards were antiquated. Nowadays through capital grants provided by the HRI, many stable yards have been improved but a lot of work still needs to be done. This work will be ongoing and, hopefully, over the next number of years, we will see more improvements.

Deputy Lawlor also asked about the betting tax. I reckon that in the past six years, we have lost about 900 stable staff through the recession. That is a lot of people for one industry to lose over that number of years. We definitely need our full seat on the board. I hope the Minister can turn around and say that we can keep it. That is more or less it. The same questions have come up from all of the members. If they wish to ask me any more questions, I will be happy to answer them.