Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak. I was thinking on the way here about going as a child to the race meeting in Galway when that festival was a farmers' festival. I remember going in and putting a bet on with my 50p and getting the perforated ticket from the tote. I had to stand on tiptoe to reach into the slot because I was so small. In a lot of families in Ireland, racing is a social thing. We grew up with it and have enjoyed it. I remember on that particular occasion that my 50p bet returned the princely sum of £56 for my place. Was I a proud man going home the same evening. What was even prouder was the fact that my father had been burned at the races on the same day and I had more money in my pocket going home than he had. It is memories like that which we all have of attending race meetings growing up. Hopefully, the next generation will have the same appreciation of it as an enjoyable sport. That is the way a lot of us look at the racing industry and the racecourses around the country.

However, it is important to look at the industry more broadly. It is the reality in rural Ireland now that agriculture is not the mainstay it used to be. The latest Teagasc figures for 2014 show that 37% of Irish farms, which is less than four in every ten, are economically viable. In the west, it is just 16% of farms that are economically viable. In many parts of rural Ireland, the only potential relates to tourism. Tourism is going to be a vital aspect of sustaining communities and populations in rural Ireland. The small racecourses form an integral part of that. In my neck of the woods, we have quite a number of racecourses. In Roscommon town we have Roscommon racecourse and over the road we have Kilbeggan racecourse to which Deputy Penrose referred earlier. There are also racecourses in Ballinrobe, Sligo and, of course, Galway. There has always been a very strong tradition of farmers having one or two horses and a local trainer having perhaps five or six horses and bringing them to small local meetings. Once in a generation, perhaps, those trainers might have a winner at Ballybrit or one of the major festivals. That is their goal in life and when it happens the whole community gets behind the trainer and the horse. It is that sense of community that is fundamentally important in relation to the racing industry, particularly outside the major centres.

It would be remiss of me to fail to join other speakers in mentioning the late Pat Eddery who was an ambassador for the racing industry. He is someone we all grew up watching cross the finishing line. Deputy Anthony Lawlor referred earlier to backing the jockey rather than the horse and Pat Eddery made quite princely sums for many people who adopted that particular tactic.

Deputy Penrose raised the issue of media rights and I want to take it up also. For the small racecourses like Roscommon, Kilbeggan, Ballinrobe and Sligo, media rights are crucially important to keeping their gates open and the courses operating. They are excellent courses and a linchpin for tourism. In fairness to most of the racecourses, they have tried to develop festivals around some of their meetings, particularly where they can get two meetings back to back. They have tried to tie in the local towns with the festivals and sought to open up their racecourses to other events to attract visitors to their areas. Ballinrobe has been hugely successful in that regard and Roscommon has been involved in that work too. That effort needs to be supported because it is a driver of local tourism development. In that context, I have concerns about the way the legislation is structured. As Deputy Penrose mentioned earlier, the media rights committee can obtain outside expertise. I do not have any particular difficulty with that. My concern is that as drafted the legislation provides that the media rights committee when negotiating any contract or arrangement referred to in subsection (1) shall consult with the executives of all the authorised racecourses. Consultation can mean calling them all into a meeting, setting out what the negotiating strategy is and going off to negotiate on that basis. The committee will then have ticked the box on consultation. There is a big difference between consultation and agreement. The issue has been flagged with the Minister and it came up at the pre-legislative stage in committee. While the Minister has provided reassurances in relation to that, the difficulty is that the law as drafted is not strong enough. My fear is that the smaller racecourses will be squeezed by this.

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