Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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It was a unique situation in 2021 because of Covid and given that tracks were closed for most of the year. Across all aspects of our lives, 2021 was a unique situation. We have seen improvement this year in racing attendances. The recent Irish Greyhound Derby was one of the best attended in many years. As with other organisations and everything else we have been doing, working to recover from Covid, to get back to where we were and hopefully to push on from that has been a key objective. We worked to support Rásaíocht Con Éireann and also to support Horse Racing Ireland through Covid. We wanted to see the particular challenge of not having anybody inside those tracks other than those that were organising the racing. We helped to deal with that, and helped them to come through that like with every other business and entity in the country post Covid. Thankfully, they are, and the objective is to try to build and improve on that.