Mr. Michael Murnane:

The only thing I can offer Deputy Burke by way of explanation is that it is a very labour-intensive industry and labour continues to be one of the largest costs. To offer some comparison, EHS, the food service, brought 283 jobs to the IGB. Excluding those jobs, we can compare like for like. At the end of 2015 and into 2016 we had, on average, 476 posts in the IGB between full-time and part-time posts. That has fallen from 607 posts in 2008. It is a wide industry that covers 16 different tracks - it used to be 17 - and there is a huge geographic spread. There are many jobs that can only be supplied by a certain person at a particular point in time.

The Deputy must keep in mind that we operate racing in Lifford, Cork and Waterford.