Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I hope that racehorse owners, who have such an amount to lose by not putting absolutely excellent people on the HRI board, would never allow a situation where somebody who was on the board of HRI was not excellent in every way.

Therefore, I do not see that one is imposing less than excellence by saying that there must a representative of the Association of Irish Racehorse Owners on the media rights committee.

The Minister probably knows by this stage because he is five years in the job that we are all going for a cold shower in the next few weeks. When I was a Minister, I often used to say that the executive officer who gets the file has a great deal of power because I often noticed that files that started at the bottom tend to get passed to the top. For that reason, to say that HRI can overturn the decisions of the media rights committee is technically true. To say that this would probably be the exception rather than the rule would also be technically true. About 90% of the time, most committees would find themselves nodded through at the more senior board unless something very bad was done. Therefore, the real powerhouse in the negotiations here is not HRI but the media rights committee. Anybody who was ever on committees with sub-committees would know this is the way the world really works on a day-to-day basis. As I have often said, the person who starts the file and proposal and agrees at the lowest level has a huge amount of power. Regardless of the shape they put it in, it has a big effect on what happens down the line. Therefore, I suggest that the Minister accepts the amendment. I do not think it is a lot to ask for.

The Minister has been very good. I want to recognise that before I came in here, he came up with a similar amendment to the one I put down and I welcome that. I noticed that another one is coming up. I might have had arguments with him on many points but one thing I would say about him as a Minister is that he has been excellent in fully engaging in the legislative process with the Opposition. He has been more than willing to accept amendments and has gone through the process in a very iterative fashion. I will always grant that he makes the Oireachtas function properly from a legislative point of view. We have this week and next week left so perhaps he will accept this amendment.

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