Mr. Brendan Gleeson:

I was involved in the Horse Racing Ireland Act 2016. This was something that we collectively reflected on in the committee as one of the issues. The traditional bodies of the Turf Club and National Hunt Racing have refereed racing for 130 years. We had to answer the question as to how we could improve their accountability while allowing them to exercise their independence. The IHRB was a solution to that. We gave it a legal identity in the context of the specific functions that it exercises under the Act. We made it independent. I will double-deck this, but we built into the Act a provision that if there was a disagreement about the funding with HRI, there was a type of arbitration procedure built into the Act for that. I would like to double-deck that but I think that is there.