Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 22 September 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 33 - Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
Horse Racing Ireland: Financial Statements 2020

9:30 am

Ms Suzanne Eade:

To be perfectly honest, it looks worse than it actually is in reality. Let me talk the Deputy through the process. We purchased a big portion of land, which is to do with the development in relation to Tipperary. At the onset, we knew that part of the process would require us to do a swap of some of that land to get the land that would allow us to widen the track. For us, this is of real strategic value. Also, when we went to do the swap, it was not really of high interest to the seller to do anything in particular in relation to the swap. We wanted that land for our overall development and it is of strategic high value to us to get that land. What happened was there was a book loss of €105,000 in relation to that project, in relation to the land itself, but there was no cash loss to HRI. That land is more important to us than it was. Where we probably got the oversight wrong is that we looked at the project as a swap and we did not look at it as a disposal and an acquisition. That is where we got it wrong. However, that land is worth more to us than what we gave away.