Dr. Lynn Hillyer:

Yes, if it relates to anti-doping. Mr. Egan was right in what he said. The process is very simple. In broad terms, information will come to any one of us, whether it be one of my team on the racecourse today, Mr. Egan, somebody in HRI, a trainer, stable staff and so on. The information can come in via a number of routes. Once it lands on someone's desk in our organisation it will come in to either me or to the head of the legal licensing compliance, Dr. Cliodhna Guy. Dr. Guy manages the confidential hotline. The matter is dealt with unequivocally. I need to be clear about this. Sometimes information can be scribbled on the back of an envelope, it can a recorded taped conversation and sometimes I will receive envelopes in the post with leaflets of products. We do not care how it comes in. The important point is that it comes in and is assessed. We need to be careful to differentiate between information coming in and hearsay. I am not saying we disregard either. We consider everything but we have to process it and assess it. That is basically converting information into intelligence. We work very closely with the BHA, which manages the database on which the intelligence is logged. Every single piece of information is logged.

A piece of information could come in today which, on its own, would not seem to make much sense but it might make sense in two months’ time when it is put together with another piece of information. That is how we work. That is the way modern anti-doping is dealt with.. The Deputy mentioned Travis Tygart of the US Anti-Doping Agency, USADA. I have had quite a number of dealings with that agency in the past. It has stated repeatedly that information coming in, for example from whistleblowers who are prepared to step up and give that information, is really important.

I will give an example of where information that came in from another racing authority was acted upon last year. It links in with Senator Paul Daly's comments, to which I wanted to respond, about having to prove our innocence. One of the things that rankled the most was reading last Sunday’s article about the six Irish horses that were alleged to have anabolic steroids on board and the claim that we were doing nothing about it, but the opposite was the case. The minute that information came into the BHA it acted on it. It communicated with us. We were across it and were prepared to act. The BHA did the most extensive piece of the work I have ever seen, apart from investigation of an adverse finding, by going into that within an inch of its life. It analysed tail and mane hair, and samples repeatedly at LGC Laboratories. I will not go into again where LGC stand in the world of hair and anabolic steroid chemistry and nothing was found. That is not a criticism of the other laboratory involved, but this is expert stuff. LGC has been dealing with anabolic steroid profiles since 1963. It knows the difference between the normal profile of a cult compared with an animal that has been administered an anabolic steroid. It has done it for us numerous times in investigations. It has dealt with live samples.

What I am trying to say is staying ahead of that, being on top of that and dealing with information in a timely fashion is critical because if that had returned a positive result, we would have been in those yards immediately on unannounced visits. It would not have just been us; it would have been us in conjunction with the Department. With anything like that we act with our colleagues in the investigations division of the Department.