Mr. Ronan Corrigan:

We thought that meeting Sport Ireland would help that. In fairness to Mr. McDermott, and Ms O'Sullivan who attended, they left that meeting saying they were quite willing for us to meet again at Sport Ireland to try to progress this. However, nothing has come from the Horse Sport Ireland team outlining its plan for the next four years, its aspirations, what it thinks it is going to cost, and what the affiliates can contribute towards that. We are a membership. We have to go on the basis that we have a certain number of members this year. We do not know whether a recession will come in two years' time and our membership will be halved, which means our income will be a fraction of what it was. We need to plan in order that we can put money aside to ensure we support an Olympic programme, a World Games programme and a European programme.

A big issue we have a huge concern about - the Senator alluded to the fact this is a 12-year plan - is that the people who are riding ponies now will potentially be riding horses in the Olympics in 12 years' time. Our biggest concern is that our youth athlete teams are starved of funding. We acknowledge they are not getting huge amounts from Sport Ireland, but the affiliates wish to support them and do support them. The chairman of the pony committee is beside me. I will let him speak because he has first-hand experience of sitting at a committee where there was no budget plan or plan, and people were told at the last minute that funds for that programme had been hatcheted in half, with no warning.