Mr. Barry O'Connor:

I will start with the couple of questions on Horse Sport Ireland. When we initiated our contact with the Minister and the Department, the first job of work that the former said he had to do was examine the structure of Horse Sport Ireland, bring it up to date and modernise it as a body. We liaised with Indecon on the restructuring of Horse Sport Ireland, making it more fit for purpose and making it more transparent where Government payments to it were concerned. The Minister appoints three members of the board as well as the chairperson and is responsible for signing off on the hiring of the CEO.

We work and liaise with Horse Sport Ireland constantly. We are all involved in various training programmes with it, so we are not in any way split from it or against it. There is no rivalry whatsoever. Before it was reorganised, we came together as a group to put together an economic mandate, which was missing from the sports horse industry for years. That was our fault as well. We are not here to try to find Ministers, Governments or Departments on which to place blame. Our industry has since been organised and our structure is up to date. Horse Sport Ireland asked for €13.1 million to start its education, breeding, prize money and infrastructure programmes. We got an extra €500,000, bringing us up to €3 million. I do not know what we can do with that.

As to whether we want, or it is feasible for us, to be covered by the Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund, where the Minister gets the money from is up to him, but we would not want to be seen to be taking money from bodies that are established in that fund. Getting into it is not one of our goals, but we do need money from somewhere. That is a question for the Minister.

On a relevant point, we are trying to emulate what the racehorse industry has done. It is an unbelievable product and, as Irish people, we are not proud enough of it. We hear stories about so and so being worth so much and winning this or that money or about there being three main owners, but those are problems that will only last for a couple of seasons and then it will be something else. It is one of Ireland's three best products. As three showjumpers, we are immensely proud of what Horse Racing Ireland, HRI, and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine have done with racing. It is incredible. When we are abroad, people ask us about it. We are an island off the coast of Europe that has the best trainer in the world, the best racehorse in the world and some of the leading studs in the world.

The Minister and civil servants at our meetings were adamant that they would pay one body, which would then distribute all of the funds, namely, Horse Sport Ireland. Any funding stream will come from it. That is important, as we need to tie the high-performance sport into breeding, centres, pony clubs, statistics and databases. It should all be in one place, as the sector is not big enough to have separate bodies. That is why we support all funding going to and coming from Horse Sport Ireland.

There was a question about Irish-bred sport horses and eventers. I would like to hand that over to Mr. O'Neill, who is more qualified to discuss whether they have the same problems as showjumpers and whether investment in prize money facilities would have a return for the economy.