McCreevy has given €1 billion of your money to the horsey set

‘THE next logical step was to put horse-racing’s finances on a permanent footing. If that is not done, racing will be at the whim of the Government of the day and, when the pressure comes for expenditure on things like health and education, racing will go down the political priorities list.”

Who said that? A jockey, maybe, or a horse-trainer, or a racehorse owner?

Clearly, you'd imagine, it was someone who wanted to pressurise the Minister for Finance into looking after the horse-racing industry over everyone else.

Well, it was none of the above.

It was, in fact, our old friend, and the best friend of the sport of kings, the Minister for Finance, Charlie McCreevy himself. The very same man who only last week was revealed to have agreed to provide a very large cheque for a grand exhibition centre in Punchestown is so committed to horse-racing and its future that there's almost no limit to the amount of taxpayers' money he's prepared to put into it.

If you don't believe me, go out and buy the book of estimates when it's published next week (or download it for free from the Department of Finance website). I haven't seen the book of estimates, but I'm going to offer you a small wager (no reason why the Minister for Finance should be the only gambler around here).

If you leaf through the book until you come to the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism (it's normally Vote 35), and run your finger down through the various different headings, you'll come to an item marked F. It's also called the "Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund."

Look across the page to see how much of your money and mine is going to go into this little fund next year.

Unless I'm very much mistaken (and that doesn't happen often, as you know), you'll find that Charlie McCreevy has allocated around €60 million as a nice little grant to the gee-gees and the bowlers for next year.

You'll have to check the book, of course, by following the simple instructions above. Because Charlie won't be mentioning it in the press release and briefings that will accompany publication of the book of estimates. If you read your newspapers the day after publication, you'll find that publication of the book of estimates is an occasion for gloom and doom. All sorts of essential services are going to be cut back next year, to keep the public finances in check. The clues in the book of estimates will be interpreted to predict a harsh budget and a lot of pain for vulnerable people and groups throughout the country.

Except, of course, for the gee-gees and bowlers. They'll get Charlie's grant of around €60 million for yet another year.

This is the man who has fought with Micheál Martin for years about the size of the health budget. This is the man who only this week told us that we had more than enough gardaí and what would we do with more of them.

He made the remark I quoted at the top of this piece to the racing journalist Michael Clower (it was published on March 2, 2000) in the context of an

attempt he was making to force the amalgamation of the various bodies involved in the running of racing into one agency. Some people thought this was a very bad idea because it would mean that the regulation of racing and the promotion of racing were going to be done by the same people a bit like the referee in a soccer match taking his instructions from the people who sell the tickets.

But Charlie was determined to persist. He promised all the bodies involved that if they came together under one roof, he would give them all the money collected in betting taxes to spend as they liked on the industry. At the time he spoke to Michael Clower, that represented an offer of around €65 million (£50m).

He didn't actually succeed in his aim of one organisation, since the Turf Club remains both independent and responsible for refereeing the sport of racing.

But he gave Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) the money anyway, so deep was his concern for the industry. In fact, he didn't just give them €65 million as promised he gave them €68 million in 2002, €65 million in 2003, and unless my prediction is wrong, he'll be giving them around €60 million next year.

That's not far short of €200 million.

And what has this hard-pressed industry done with the money (apart from saying Hail Marys for Charlie McCreevy every night)? Have they doubled the wages of the stable lads and the thousands of other people who work in that industry for very low wages? Well, I don't think so.

ONE clue about where the money is going can be found in the strategic plan published by Horse Racing Ireland. The first objective outlined in that plan is to keep the Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund (that's the tax money) growing.

The fourth objective says that HRI "will allocate 50% of its annual funding to prize money to enable the total prize fund to grow from €46 million in 2002 to at least €60 million in 2007, while also reducing the contribution of owners (via entry fees) from 31% to 25% of the total fund".

In a nutshell, they are going to use the tax money Charlie McCreevy has given them to give it back to the owners. The owners are not all rich, but they include most of the richest men in Ireland.

Many of them are involved in bloodstock and breeding of horses, a highly lucrative activity that, thanks to a succession of Fianna Fáil ministers, is entirely tax free.

And now, thanks to Charlie McCreevy, we are forking out for their prize money as well, at a time when we are being told that we cannot afford basic services.

The prize money we are giving horse-racing would keep thousands of community employment jobs going next year but those valuable jobs are going to be cut. The prize money won't be.

Last week, the Comptroller and Auditor General reported that Charlie, and his side-kick Joe Walsh, had between them contrived to have the taxpayer fork out a total of just under €15 million for the Exhibition and Show Centre in Punchestown.

There are still questions to be answered about who initiated this further transfer of our money to the horsey industry, but there are good grounds for believing that the promoters knew in advance that if they asked for money, they wouldn't get a refusal.

We have no way of knowing how much tax has been foregone over the years because of the tax-free status of the bloodstock industry, but I reckon it's not less than €100 million a year.

Add that to the €60 million a year Charlie is giving as a guaranteed grant and the two contributions to his favourite sport add up to a billion euro over the six years he has been in office. In that context, they probably saw the money for Punchestown as little more than petty cash.