Mr. Damian McDonald:

It was a very successful show. Just to cover the other points that, perhaps, the chairman has not covered. On the DNA side, about 15% of the foals we register do not have a defined pedigree but 85% have. The figures for older horses are the opposite. There are many more older horses registered without pedigree than there are with pedigree. Part of that is mopping up of a historical situation. All of the animals are microchipped, even those that do not have a recorded pedigree. One of the competitive advantages our stud book has since 1999 is that we have verified the parentage of all the animals in the stud book using DNA, thanks to funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. That is the way we have to go. Many of the competitions and initiatives we organise here would be restricted to animals with fully recorded pedigree. We need to get that message out to people that one has to record a pedigree. We need people to give us that information to build our stud book and build our breeds, otherwise we will go nowhere.

On a related point in regard to ponies, recently we got a licence from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to open a sport pony stud-book. Again, the problem with non-recorded pedigree would be even greater in ponies. The Senator made a good point when she said our ponies are still very sought after. However, many of them are leaving the country with no papers. That is an issue we have to address. We have a newly established sport pony stud book that we hope to populate in the coming years.

The issue about owners is a key point. Most of our senior show-jumping team are fuelled by foreign owners. We have appointed Tamso Doyle formerly of Horse Sport Ireland, to work with our owners. We have an owners' programme in place to better acknowledge the contribution those owners, many of whom are foreign, have made to us. The Deputy's point about looking at tax incentives to get more Irish people to invest in top horses is a good one and one that we should follow up on.

We were fortunate this year that a donor made a significant contribution towards funding our eventing team for the Olympics. That will be a big help. The Deputy mentioned the sponsorship deal from Investec announced this morning. We are delighted that a company of the standing of Investec has got involved in the Irish show-jumping team. It is a limited arrangement. It runs up until the end of this year's European championships. It is for the Dublin horse show and the European championships. We hope that this would be an introduction and that we would have a long-term relationship with Investec. The results will be crucial and hopefully we can deliver at the European championships.

Earlier there was much talk about qualifying for the Olympics. Qualifying in show-jumping for the Olympics is quite difficult because even though we are very good on the world stage, there are only three places exclusively kept for European teams. Some of the European teams won places at the world championships, which opens up a few more places. The Olympic movement operates on the principle of universality. It has places reserved for all the other continents as well. The reality is that the best teams do not necessarily get to go to the Olympics because of the regional spread. We are in Europe. It is a very competitive pool to get out of but, touch wood, if things go well on the day, we should be able to pull off a result to do it.

I think I have dealt with most of the issues. If there is anything I have left out, please prompt me and I will be happy to follow up on it afterwards.