Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour)
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77. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine in view of Horse Racing Ireland seeking to secure an adequate and consistent level of multi-annual funding from the Exchequer for Irish horse racing, the way he plans on increasing the tax contribution from the multi-million euro Irish thoroughbred breeding industry here; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48494/14]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The funding mechanism for the provision of State support to the horse racing industry is set down in Section 12 of the Horse and Greyhound Racing Act 2001. This legislation will be updated in the forthcoming Horse Racing Ireland (Amendment) Bill which will be published early in 2015, after it is approved by CabinetThe General Scheme of this Bill, published in June 2014, was examined by the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine as part of the pre-legislative scrutiny process. The basis of future funding to be provided to Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) will be linked to a number of variables including the strategic and business plans of the organisation, an assessment of the financial needs of HRI, income raised from excise duty on betting, the state of Excehquer finances and the decision of both Houses of the Oireachtas regarding the amount of funding to be allocated to the Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund, Section 12 (13) of the Horse and Greyhound Racing Act 2001, refers.

The Minister for Finance has published the Betting (Amendment) Bill 2013 which when enacted will ensure that all bookmakers taking bets from Ireland will pay 1% betting duty on those bets in the same way that betting shops currently do. Betting Exchanges will also be subject to tax under the new arrangements but the calculation of the tax will differ from that applying to bookmakers; they will be subject to 15% duty on their commission. These measures will ensure that the duty received from betting will be increased significantly. The latest update from the Department of Finance suggests that the Betting (Amendment) Bill 2013 is expected to pass all stages in the early part of 2015.

Against this background, I am pleased to have been able to increase the allocation under the Horse and Greyhound Fund from €54.22m (2014) to €68m (2015), and HRI’s allocation increased from €43.4m (2014) to €54.4m (2015), representing a 25% increase.

Future allocations for the Horse and Greyhound Racing sector will be decided in the context of the annual budgetary process in accordance with the relevant legislation governing this expenditure.