Paul Daly (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister. It seems a little bit repetitive because the agriculture committee meeting was only yesterday evening and we are dealing with the same topic, so it seems like we are repeating ourselves, but when something is important enough to say, it is important enough to say it more than once.

I welcome the fund. As I stated yesterday evening and even though most people know, it would be remiss of me not to put on the record that I am a former chairperson of a rural track at Kilbeggan. I am a current director of Kilbeggan race company. I have raced horses in the past and we are currently breaking a yearling who is the dream. This will be the big one. The Minister knows himself that is how these dreams work.

I welcome the fund but I have to record my disappointment at the fact what is in budget 2026 is an equivalent sum to what was in budget 2025. I would have liked to have seen an increase. I warmly and strongly welcome what the Minister said at the conclusion of his statement about the ring-fenced money towards welfare on the back of the report that was commissioned for the Committee of Public Accounts.

As an active member and former chairperson of Kilbeggan, I can give my examples as to where the majority of this money goes. The reason I think it needs to be increased is because it is all going towards welfare. The vast majority of it goes towards welfare. While Kilbeggan is a sporting organisation, it does not qualify for sports capital. Our only source of funding for any capital development we undertake is a 40% grant from HRI. That 40% comes from this fund. The remaining 60% comes from the community. The past four projects we did cost between €1.5 million and €2 million overall. We put in an irrigation system to ensure the ground was safe at all times in the interest of horse welfare. There are new state-of-the-art stables, veterinary boxes, a trotting area with rubberised ground and so on, all in the interest of horse welfare and veterinary services on our race tracks. During that period, CCTV cameras were also installed at the request of IHRB but actually funded by HRI. That was again for horse welfare and anti-doping. We had to put down rubberised mats all around our parade ring. They were all the projects. Our current project is a new medical centre. That is for the health and safety of the jockeys and others involved. That is where the money goes. If we stagnate funding, those are the areas that will lose out.

Last year, Rásaíocht Con Éireann spent €4 million on welfare issues. Included in that expenditure were dental health schemes, kennel improvement schemes, traceability schemes, greyhound care funding and greyhound care centres. That is where the money goes. If we oppose this funding, we are actually opposing welfare. That is why I would have liked to have seen it increase. HRI has plans for a national equine centre and I welcome the announcement of the second all-weather track, which are all positive moves, but there were problems and there always are problems. There will always be a bad apple and a bad actor in any area. Our goal is to weed those out through the funding, schemes, welfare inspections, etc. We need to weed out the bad actors.

I was here for the Greyhound Racing Act 2019 and we have seen massive improvements when it comes to traceability, welfare and governance issues since that Act.We need to continue working along those lines to improve that. I would go as far as saying that there are a lot of dog issues. We deal with them regularly through the agriculture system, for example, sheep worrying, stray dogs, etc. If every dog owner was as dedicated and committed and worked to the same husbandry as greyhound owners did, we would not actually have dog welfare issues or dog problems. We, the people in this industry, are the flag bearers. I am not going to go through it. I had all the figures here in front of me as well.

My colleague and neighbour from Longford mentioned a number of race meetings, the statistics and the return we get. We are talking in the bigger picture about a very small investment for the return the two industries bring to our economy. All we have to do is go to Killarney or Galway or Punchestown and see the amount of money that is being spent by tourists, not only domestic but from overseas, who come to these isles to support this. They do so from a sporting point of view, but they are ultimately industries that are employing people and injecting money into rural economies where money is badly needed and there is not much else going on.

We need to keep improving. I am never going to deny that. As I said, there were issues with the governance. We have seen massive improvements on the greyhound side. The greyhounds were probably seen as the poor relation. As a racing man, I would often have possibly regretted the fact that maybe the greyhound side was causing more problems than we needed to be dealing with. I have to acknowledge Rásaíocht Con Éireann, RCÉ, and all the massive improvements it is making. As I said, there was €4 million alone last year on welfare. It was a mess - nobody is denying that - but we have to acknowledge progress, and we have to keep funding further progress. We should all know better than anybody as politicians that we will never solve all the problems. They are never all going to be solved, but we have to try to keep going in the right direction, and we should never slow down progress or inhibit it. As I said, I do wish that the fund could increase. I know there are budgetary constraints but I hope, going into the future, the Minister might be able to raise it again because standing still is not progress.