Mr. Ger O'Neill:

I am a director at Castlefield Sport Horses. It is a business I started in the last seven or eight years in what were challenging times. I have been lucky to win gold medals at the world championships and my rider has just won a gold medal at the European championships this year. I am in a similar situation to Mr. Broderick. We are trying to push forward and improve our horses here. Some of our expensive horses are worth up to €1 million and yet some of the facilities that we have to ride in here are not safe for the horses we want to compete with.

For the last six weeks, I have based some of my horses in Belgium. There are good facilities there that are up to speed with what we are trying to do. I have a young family in Ireland and I hope not to have to move. Ireland has ten of the top 100 riders in the world but only one of them is now based in Ireland. I would love to try to stay here but at the moment it is not viable for us to do that and operate at a high level. We are asking that the facilities be improved. Perhaps the committee could also have a broad look at the sector and see what we are doing and how much it is worth to the economy. We feel we are being overlooked somewhat. The racing industry is very good, as is the greyhound sector, but we are the poor relation. We really want to be taken seriously. We are serious people and we are committed to what we do. There are great people in Ireland with great love for the horses but we do not feel like we are getting much back from it at moment.