Mr. Nicky Hartery:

Not today. I have been to Kilbeggan, had a horse run in Kilbeggan and it is a nice place to be and to race. With regard to Brexit, in other non-HRI businesses, it is also a big deal. My process relating to Brexit is to prepare for the worst. I will talk the committee through some of that. I have spent time with the team at HRI on this. It is one of the biggest and most pressing challenges facing Irish industry and breeding. The ability to move horses between the three big nations is really important, as the Deputy mentioned, with France Galop, the UK and us in Ireland. Between the three individual groups and the departments of agriculture in each country, a high healthcare standard has developed and was presented to Brussels last Thursday. That also has the support of the other 15%, which are Italy, Germany, Scandinavian countries, Spain and others. It has united support across Europe. That is so horses can move freely within Europe. That part of it has been done. Activity has started to complete the issue of - using airline terminology - priority boarding, so that when it comes to a port, a horse is not delayed for a number of hours but moves through on priority. That part of the logistics has to be completed and will be done. Those are the two critical items. That is assuming a hard Brexit. That means there will be special categorisation for thoroughbred horses.

The next issue related to funding. A key issue with funding is that there are a number of areas where there is funding, such as the foal levy, which I have been paying into for years, and that should be retained. We are looking at every mechanism that provides revenue to HRI. That is one. The stallion masters provide approximately €2.5 million a year, which goes into European breeders' funds and so on. The other issue which I am interested in, when I look at this as a balanced portfolio, is that we collected approximately €70 million for HRI in 2001 on €1 billion of revenue in betting. Today, we collect €51 million on €5 billion. There is a significant imbalance somewhere. I am not saying that it should go up by a certain amount or anything like that. We need a balanced portfolio. There needs to be more give where we, as HRI, can fully fund ourselves. The UK tax is 2.5%. We have an excellent product. How do we stay competitive? In France, they take 7.5% in the pari-mutuel to fund their organisation. If an Irish horse is racing in France, one misses the premiums which are worth another 80% of the winnings. I raced there recently and the winning horse, which was just ahead of us, had €17,500 of a win take and approximately €12,500 between premiums. It is quite significant. There are different models in different countries. I am not saying there is any outcome from this but HRI will look at the different models used, and at what is best for Horse Racing Ireland so that we can give it and the industry in Ireland an advantage as we go forward.

I may have answered both Deputy McConalogue's questions at the same time. Does he want to ask something else?