Mr. Phil Meaney:

I accept that there is negative comment. In my opening statement, I highlighted that as a board, we have had to make tough decisions. People find it very hard to accept tough decisions. It is often hard to make tough decisions but we had a job to do. When I came on board we had a €2.5 million IOU there from 2005 that had to be paid to Dundalk Stadium, which is a private stadium.

We had to pay that in 2012. It was a legally binding agreement. We had to put a small investment in Clonmel and the Youghal track. Three High Court cases that were there before my time had to be dealt with. We had a serious deficit in our defined benefit pension scheme, as had everybody who had a defined benefit pension scheme. They were the kind of issues that had to be dealt with. We did not have the kind of money we wanted to invest in marketing, IT and prize money. That plus the tough decision to sell Harold's Cross brought the board adverse publicity. I would love to be starting off as chairman of the board now compared with when I started off six years ago. It is a clean business now. It will effectively have no debts and will be in a very good position going forward. It has taken a lot of hard decisions to get there.