Mr. Brian Kavanagh:

I think the idea would be that in a second all-weather track, we would have the facility for horses to be on site and for trainers to have a start-up situation in that. They have not gotten to it in Dundalk. I do not know whether it is because it is horses and greyhounds together or for some other reason. I know they use Dundalk significantly outside race meetings for training galloping horses, but the horses are all visitors. They are not stabled on site. It is not something that we have come across.

I was asked about separate funding. I do not know if it is an issue. It may be something that people look at. There is a rigid formula of 80:20. Equally, a lot of people who are interested in horses are interested in dogs as well andvice versa. There is an overlap between the two, and we speak with the people in Bord na gCon on an ongoing basis. Whether the funding should be together or separate, it is not for us to decide. Certainly, as I said, there is an overlap in rural communities in both sectors. The point was very well made on the dependence of rural areas on big trainers and I think this is a positive for us. I think Alan Dukes did a survey ten years ago that said that within a five mile or a ten mile radius of a small town like Bagenalstown in Carlow, 600 jobs are created by Willie Mullins, Jim Bolger, local stud farms, Red Mills horse feeds, vets and point-to-point developers. The point was well made that if one had a factory coming to Bagenalstown that was going to create 600 full-time jobs, the country would make every effort to attract it. Here is an indigenous industry creating those jobs.

In addition to Bagenalstown, one reads about Piltown in County Kilkenny, Gordon Elliot in Summerhill in County Meath, Jessica Harrington in Moone in County Kildare and Aidan O'Brien in Rosegreen in Tipperary. There is no one else creating this sort of employment in villages and towns around the country. That is the real backbone of this industry and it is not an east coast Dublin-centric IT-based industry. It is spread throughout rural Ireland, it is bringing international money in, and it is putting jobs right into the heart of rural areas. I know there is a big debate going on within politics at the moment about rural-urban Ireland. Racing certainly has its part to play, so I think that is a really good point.