Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I did not hear the Minister mention J.P. McManus, Michael O’Leary or John Magnier, not to mention the various people who are not living in this country who are in receipt of this public money.

If one cuts out all the propaganda, the Government is choosing to give more than €40 million of public money every year to people who are already multimillionaires. That is what is happening. The Minister can talk about the industry, how successful it is and so on, and that is fine; I agree. However, that is not an argument to use the industry to give tens of millions of euro to people who are already very rich. That is an argument to say the industry can fund itself, as is the case in many other countries. There is an idea that Ireland is not an outlier and there is a reason why Irish prize money is so high. It is so high because of the extra public money that is provided. The industry would be capable of paying for its prize money, rather than having the majority of it paid by the public, through broadcasting rights, entry fees, sponsorship, breeding and bloodstock sales to name but a few potential areas of income.

The bottom line here is that it is a political choice to hand over this money. I do not think that is justified on its own terms. Horse racing is not the poor relation of all the other sports in the country that have more people participating in them. That does not justify the choice. At least the Minister did not make the argument that Horse Racing Ireland, HRI, has made. It has stated it is not in receipt of any taxpayers' money because all its money is raised from the betting tax. That tax is paid by ordinary people. That brings me to the following point. Does the Minister not accept that this money that is raised from taxes on gambling should be spent on tackling the problem of gambling addiction and problem gambling, which the Government has spoken at length about today?

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