I want to add my voice to that of Deputy Cooney in welcoming the Bill in general. It is important for us to recognise that, although it is difficult to make precise economic predictions in the matter of the non-thoroughbred horse, the prospects are now extraordinarily good particularly with the growth of television to which Deputy Cooney referred and with the growth of such things as three-day eventing and the importance of the equine section of the Olympic Games. If this is coupled with growing leisure throughout the world and with relatively higher standards of living and more spending money, we face the prospect of many millions of people wishing to be not just onlookers but participants in a sport that is coming to be recognised as complex and satisfying and in every way magnificent.
With this prospect of an immense and continuing growth in all equestrian sports and with growing participation in them, we find ourselves uniquely located in a world sense to supply what must be a rising demand. This is an extraordinarily fortunate situation for us but one which places great responsibility on us and requires planning. In this context, I think the work of the survey team is to be commended for their recognition of the importance of this industry in Ireland and its immense potential for growth and the forward-planning and care that went into what is, by-and-large, a valuable report.
We are, then, devoting thought and planning to something that almost certainly for the Irish countryside will be profoundly important and in economic terms of growing importance as years go on. A larger section of farmers' incomes—although it is already significant—in relation to thoroughbred and non-thoroughbred horses, a growing section of rural income will come from this sort of agricultural activity and the figure the Minister quoted, £5 million, is one we can expect to increase quite rapidly and steadily.
If we look at the evolution in Ireland of—I am not going to talk about race-horses—what might be called sport horses in a general sense, whether show horses or hunters or children's ponies or three-day event horses it has been largely a fortuitous one and it has been based on a number of circumstances which no longer apply. If one goes back to the period before the independence of the State, it was a very important military role as a source of cavalry horses in this country which gave an economic base and a direction to the breeding of a certain sort of horse. That, of course, does not exist any more.
Then, we have this extraordinary wealth which it is impossible to put into terms of pounds, it is impossible to quantify—the deep knowledge and the deep love and deep feeling of identification that exists all through the Irish countryside. The extraordinary feeling for horses that Irish people have is amazingly valuable in terms of being able to produce good stock in the right numbers.
As a practising veterinary surgeon and as someone who has worked with horses in other countries, it is very striking to me how far superior in their feeling for horses even the average Irish employee in any way related to horses is to the comparable person in other countries who has not the affection, the insight and the love of his work that makes Irish horse-minders so good. This is an historical accident. The tremendous interest in horses may have been imprinted on us at a time when the vast majority of the population were forbidden to own a horse above a certain quality. It may be this that has made us so deeply interested.
It may be that this disgraceful ordinance of the past has left us a useful residue of care for and interest in horses. This is an enormous wealth but the other circumstance that was of great value to us is one which is also changing. I refer to the farmer who kept one or two mares, probably only one mare, the Irish draught mare, who could work the land, go to town, hunt, produce a foal to a thoroughbred stallion, an animal that was a hunter and a very desirable sort of creature. This section of our population is disappearing fairly fast anyway and utilisation of horses on farms is, of course, disappearing too. It is regrettable but it is a fact.
Therefore, I think it is desirable to urge on the Minister the consideration of ways in which the keeping of what we will call an Irish draught mare should be made more financially desirable. I do not mean simply by means of premiums, although the premiums are useful, but we have witnessed a circumstance where all over the country due to the pressure of advertising and due to the pressure, indeed, of emulation, farmers have mechanised beyond in many cases what is strictly economically justifiable and where it would pay them better on a certain scale to have a thoroughbred draught mare.
An interesting line of investigation that I know of is being carried on in France where the same problem came up. It is in fact, State-aided research to provide modern designs in relation to machines, ploughs, all sorts of implements, carts, but for use with horses.
We are using implements now which are nothing like as modern or as efficient as they could be and there is interesting French work on this and I should like to see some initiative from the Department to see if it would be possible to employ modern techniques and modern materials in the construction of agricultural machinery for use in conjunction with the horse.
We can expect—and I think we ought to expect—to be the world capital of horses in the future. We have the climate, the tradition, the inclination, the know-how, if we take the right organisational steps at Government and at industry level and there is nothing that can stop us doing this. This, then, would be the obvious place to locate the construction of the sort of implements which would be efficient, modern and much cheaper than the tractor operated machinery but it would be of value, not just in Ireland, but in other parts of the world as well, particularly in developing countries, because we have seen a rush with tremendous commercial pressure behind it into mechanisation, when, in fact, often it has not been economically justified. We could use research, investigation services, the methods of popularisation and economic investigation, all the methods of persuasion we have to indicate to farmers over and over that they would be better off keeping a mare, getting a good foal and being able to do a number of jobs on better economic terms with the right sort of mare, that she would pay better than by doing it with machinery.
The thing that is worrying is that the base of the breeding industry of the pleasure horse, while it is still extraordinarily wide in Ireland—and this is the source of our strength—is none the less narrowing fairly rapidly. The number of people who keep the Irish draught mare is becoming fewer and our real wealth is the man with an eye for a horse, the man who picks a stallion that would fit well with his horse, the man who really does a foal well. To the extent that we possess many tens of thousands of such people, we are sure to continue turning up good horses. If that base narrows then we get into the position where it becomes a big industry for a smaller number of people and this, of course, is undesirable from the point of view of putting money back into the countryside but it is also undesirable from the point of view of the continuous improvement of the quality of horses.
So that, the fortuitous situation that until the turn of the century we were a very important source of horses for the British army and that we have, because of the structure of our rural population, the tradition of the draught mare being spread out through the whole countryside, are things that are disappearing and it, therefore, makes the task all the more urgent to restructure the industry. We cannot depend on the fortuitous or largely fortuitous circumstances that gave us our eminence in the past and we cannot depend, in fact, upon the persistence of that eminence. We must be a little disturbed. While we are delighted to see Irish horses showing up, for example, in the jumping teams of Italy and Switzerland we have to be impressed by the emergence of the German pleasure horse, an extraordinarily high quality, extraordinarily well-made in terms of human training, an extraordinarily successfully produced animal based on a tradition different from our tradition of crossing a farmer's working horse with a thoroughbred stallion.
I am speaking in this context as a veterinary surgeon, as someone who has taught the examination for soundness of horses in a veterinary school. I should like to make a plea for more research in the whole horse area because the sort of eminence we must aim at is that we must be the best in the world in this area. That is a perfectly possible objective circumstanced as we are in this country.
Therefore more and more we must be completely au fait with world research on thoroughbreds and all sorts of horses. We must not just read other people's research and transfer their findings to Ireland. We must be at the forefront of development. I say this as a member of the profession. Not solely, but primarily, this research should be the task of the veterinary profession. I owe part of my professional education to an organisation that has existed in Britain for many years. It is now called the Animal Health Trust. It runs scholarships and it also runs an equine research station and has done so for many years at Newmarket. This is a small and semivoluntary body. It has some State support but most of the money is contributed voluntarily. The work done at Newmarket by the Animal Health has spread far beyond Britain and has been of great value all over the world.
People associated with horses are often a bit unscientific and sometimes a bit anti-scientific, indeed. Nonetheless we can as little escape the impact of science on horses as we can escape it on any other area of human activity. At the moment our equine research is being carried out partly by people in the veterinary schools and partly in the Agricultural Institute. Equine research should be clarified and unified and strengthened in this country because, if we are to be the best in terms of the product, we have no option but to be the best in terms of the back-up science, whether it is of a disease prevention nature, a genetic nature, a nutritional nature, or whatever.
We are very fortunate in Ireland in that the sort of snobbery that attaches itself to riding horses in other countries is almost non-existent here. Riding horses and being interested in horses is not confined to a tiny sector of the population, generally a rather snobbish and unpleasant section of the population, as it is in other countries. This is of great value to us and we can build on it because we can draw on a whole population both as horsemen and as horse breeders. As people become a bit richer their range of sporting and recreational activities spreads. We have seen this happening in regard to boating, for example, and I think we can expect to see it happening in regard to horses.
It is already very widely based in Ireland but it seems to me to be very important that we should plan and act in such a way that all sorts of equestrian sports are made available to the whole population. This sport is fairly readily available in the countryside and it should be available in the cities as well. Therefore, while it needs tact and consideration and the ordinary awareness of people's problems in its introduction, the suggestion about the licensing of horse riding establishments is a good one. Its introduction would have to be worked out, but the suggestion is good from the point of view of the protection of the public and, speaking as a veterinary surgeon, also from the point of view of the protection of horses. There is a tiny proportion in any uncontrolled and growing public activity of this sort, in any country, at any time—this is no stigma on Ireland or on the present—who may be careless or neglectful with effects that are adverse to the image of horse riding establishments. The various Government Departments have shown themselves to be quite human and well-behaved in regard to licensing other things and I think this ought to be done, as soon as it can be introduced, in a humane way.
I want to say something about the problem of the Irish draught because in the past we based ourselves very much on the tradition that tens of thousands of farmers had in their mind's eye what the Irish draught ought to be. We can depend on this less and less in the future. I agree that conformation is important in horses. It is more so in horses than it is in other domestic livestock. In the end performance is the thing, and not conformation. From somebody who has been involved with horses all his professional life, this may seem like sacrilege but it is true. It is more important that a horse should look nice than that a dairy cow should look nice. If you are producing a show jumper the important thing is that he should jump. If you are producing a racehorse the important thing is that at the end of the race he should pass the post in front of the others.
I think we are coming to the time when we cannot make progress in providing guaranteed performers, whether it be for show jumping or three-day events or whatever, without many more records. We do not know much at this time about breeding for these things in the way people know or claim to know about breeding to get a "mile and a halfer" or a 'chaser. Without identification of the animal and the accumulation of records we cannot go on to a more rationally based and scientifically based programme. This seems to me to be central if we are to offer to the whole world not just magnificent conformation or good bone but also good performance.
The other interesting thing is the experience in Europe about the production of what one might call pure strains or pure breeds, not really distinct breeds but pure strains which are not thoroughbreds and which are not working farm horses like the Irish draught or the Clydesdale but which are specifically bred, both stallions and mares, as pleasure horses, as riding horses or show jumpers. There are arguments against a rapid evolution in this direction in Ireland. We have great capital and something extremely valuable in the existence of the Irish draught. I am not for one moment suggesting that we should get away from that.
I am suggesting that we would lose nothing if, in parallel and on a very limited scale, as we have done for example with some breeds of cattle, we investigated how some of these European pure breeds of pleasure horses would acclimatise themselves to this country and how they would do in our circumstances. I should be interested to hear the Minister's opinion on whether this is a valid line of development. It is something we certainly ought to be looking at because there are experienced people in Europe who believe that the future of the pleasure horse lies with some of these special strains when you are looking for extraordinary docility and controllability, when you are looking for the horse to deal with the big jumps and the tiny spaces of the modern show jumping arena. We must at least look at this line of development and keep in contact with the evolution in European countries and also to some extent in the United States or we may be left out. I am not counterposing this to the Irish draught which I am sure in the lifetime of the vast majority of people here will remain the backbone of our pleasure horse production.
This is a place where we might open our options and look at other possible lines of development. A national training centre is necessary. Without a place that builds up very great expertise and very great traditions of the highest technique and method, one does not get to the forefront in the training of man and horse at a time when such qualities are used all over the world in the production of highly trained horses. The day when an experienced man and a good horse could, of themselves, come to the forefront in international show jumping is gone. Compared with the 1930s, other countries have gone ahead of us in this regard. A national training centre is, therefore, a good concept.
It is very important to keep the breeding, training and enjoying of horses spread through the largest possible section of the community. We must not let it become the sport of a geographical area or particular income group. We must have the participation of people who are not rich enough to put a horse in a box, drive 200 miles and stay away from home for three or four days. While we need a national centre located in one place where the pinnacle of technique, tradition and know-how can be accumulated, we need a bit of geographical spread as well: we need some subcentres. If we build it all into one centre, we should be differentiating in favour of the rich: we should be narrowing the base of our industry and making participation harder for the ordinary working farmers who are and always will be the backbone of this industry.
It is necessary to reconcile the spreading of the industry with the need to attain a pinnacle at a single centre. I do not say that centres should be spread at the same level throughout the country but offshoots of subdivisions are desirable in different geographical locations. We must marry our profoundly fortunate position of a widely-diversified interest in and knowledge of this industry with a very high technique and with the ultimate that one can get in modern science.
With a common language among the vast majority of our people with that spoken in Britain and in the United States and with immense interest in our horses among the British, the Americans and people as far away as Japan, I believe a very retrograde trend in the breeding of our thoroughbred horses is evolving. I believe we are seeing the evolution of groups who are becoming dominant in thoroughbred breeding who have very little roots in Ireland and very little concern for Ireland. This is dangerous. While people are welcome to come here and to breed horses here, the control must remain in Ireland. We must have good scientists, good stud managers, good breeders, good geneticists, good veterinarians, and so on, if we are to achieve the pinnacle of quality which is so desirable and necessary. We must have experts of every sort. We must have highly expert people who are as good as the best, or who are the best, in the world. To the extent that we let the control of the industry out of our national grip, we run a risk in all of these areas. I shall not pursue that trend in thoroughbred breeding which is more apparent there than in the breeding of pleasure horses. The stakes are greater in the breeding of the classic thoroughbred horse.
In the past quarter of a century, the value of the pleasure horse of good quality three-day type is increasing. The prize money is going up and up and commercial sponsoring is going up and up. There are vast television audiences also. In other words, it is rapidly becoming a very big business. Therefore the composition of the board is crucial. It would be nice to say that, in the choice of persons, Ministers had always acted out of a desire to get the very best possible people but it would not be true to say so. On the other hand, I do not suggest that boards are packed with reliable nonentities who get there on the basis of services rendered. Sometimes Ministers have behaved well and sometimes they have behaved disgracefully. When they behaved disgracefully, the industry suffered long after they had gone. We shall watch with very great concern to see whom the Minister nominates.
It is essential to maintain the control among Irish people because it is by participation in this sort of work that people get to the level of knowledge and expertise that can build the future of the industry. Therefore, this is a very crucial decision and without making comparisons with the past or giving specific instances I would urge the Minister, as strongly as I can, to be guided by professional competence and no other consideration. Since it has been decided that the board must be filled by ministerial nomination and not in another way, in what I might perhaps consider a more democratic way, I want to urge the Minister to listen to the existing professional experts, the existing participants, the people actually involved in the industry. I would like to see a mechanism by which, as distinct from consultation, the actual right to select was diversified a bit and taken out of the Minister's hands. I would like to see that in many instances where people serve either in a voluntary way or for small remuneration on boards of this sort but that is a large and general discussion. I do not think the method of ministerial consultation and then ministerial nomination necessarily gives one the best people. Very often it does not but I am not now raising the question of a change in the method by which people are put on the board. I am urging the Minister to utilise the present mechanism in a very cold-blooded and ruthless way to ensure simply that the industry, which is of growing importance, will be served by the best possible people regardless of who they are.
I want to close by reiterating the point that, in fact, the source of our strength is the widespread nature of interest and knowledge and commitment on the part of our population and therefore the primary consideration should be to keep the horse breeding industry and the whole industry of the utilisation and enjoying of pleasure horses as widely dispersed through the population as possible, to resist the tendencies which are obvious—because one must base oneself on sophisticated and expensive techniques and a very high level of science—that therefore one must do this with a small number of big producers and in single centres. We need diversification and we can get the science and the sophistication while keeping the broad base and while guaranteeing that the control of the industry remains in the hands of a very large number of farmers who have been its sustenance in less good times and whose expert knowledge is, in the long run, the only guarantee of the future success of the Irish horse industry.
