Mr. William Fitzgerald:

If the Senator does not mind, I will take that question. She is correct about race injuries; I cannot disagree with her. The increase was very concerning. Were it to be repeated, it would ask serious questions of us as an industry. Greyhound Racing Ireland has taken a number of steps, even since the turn of the year. We have resurfaced a number of our tracks and engaged the services of a multinational institute called the Sports Turf Research Institute - it does a great deal of work in Australia and the UK on greyhound racing surfaces and horse racing surfaces and is an expert in examining moisture quantity, the camber of bends, etc. - to try to address the controllables. This week, the Sports Turf Research Institute is visiting three tracks around the country, which are the first tranche of work that the institute is taking on with us. From this point of view, we have taken measures to address last year's increase in injuries and deaths.

For the information of members, the numbers for 2022 had reduced considerably to the end of April. Approximately 72 dogs were injured and 24 euthanised. These figures are for race meetings.

I am looking at my notes, which I made because I wanted to catch all of the Senator's queries. She asked about the presence of vets at official and unofficial trials and the gathering of data. Since 1 November, all injury data have been captured on unofficial as well as official trials. To segue into the Senator’s final question somewhat, we do not have vets at all unofficial and official trials as matters stand. To a degree, the quality of the data differs slightly between official and unofficial trials because the people gathering the data are not veterinary surgeons and, therefore, it is not within their purview to give diagnoses. As such, the information is more at the bigger picture level. We ask them to indicate whether the injury is to a forelimb or hindlimb, whether it is a hock injury and if it is a back injury. We also have a category of “Other” if the person knows that the dog was hurt but does not know where. As I mentioned, forming a diagnosis is not within these people’s purview.

Regarding the presence of vets at trials, it is the case in the UK that they are present at official trials but they are not present at unofficial ones. Having spoken to colleagues in Australia, the number of official trials there is small. They largely refer to official trials as what we would classify as conduct trials. What we would classify as official trials are not classified in the same way in Australia and vets there are not present at the vast majority of them. The reason for this is that the information that both of those jurisdictions have gathered suggests that the risk of injury is far less at trials because there are fewer greyhounds, less potential for collision and less potential for injuries.

There is no disputing that some dogs get hurt, but it must be borne in mind that, in 2021, there were approximately 68,000 additional trials carried out on RCE tracks with just under 84,000 dogs. RCE does not physically have the resources to cover that level of activity. The Senator may be aware that trying to locate veterinary surgeons and veterinary labour has been tricky for some time. This has not been the case for just the past six months. Rather, it has been the case for the past ten years, and there is no sign of the situation changing in the immediate term.

In terms of making our resources stretch as far as they can, vets are present at races currently. If the available resources were to change, I would argue strongly for addressing the issue, but they are not present elsewhere at this point in time. Trying to make our resources stretch may be a bridge too far.