About £100,000 a year. Could its collection have been arranged in no other way? If the bookmakers were able to persuade the Minister six or seven years ago that the revenue of the State should be required to give £100,000 rather than impose on them the impossible task of collecting it, why is it we are prepared to do for the finances of the Racing Board, at the expense of the "bookies" convenience what we were not prepared to do for the revenue of the State itself? Observe what that will lead into. It will lead into Sections 28 and 29—inspectors and inspectors.
Is there anyone in this House who is in business and who has experience of inspectors? With two friends, I went down to Connemara, to the Gaeltacht, a couple of days ago. We went to visit an old lady friend of ours whose house stood about 100 yards up from the road. I went there with some people who were experts in the Irish language, to see how the language was getting on in what was the FíorGaeltacht, if there was any such thing in Ireland. We got out of the car on the road. There were 100 yards of road up to the woman's house. I could see her looking over the half-door when we got out of the car. When she saw us climbing the fence to go up the road she clapped out the door and ran in. My friend said to me: "Is dóigh léi gur cigirí sinn"—"She thinks we are inspectors." Up we went to the house. She was an old friend, but she could not recognise us 100 yards down the road. We stood for several minutes at the door before she would open it. When she did, there was a light of battle in her eyes which I had not seen there for over 20 years. She said: "What do you want?" My friend said: "An aithníonn tú mé?""Ní aithním," said she. Then he made himself known to her in Irish, and she looked at him and said: "Ba dhóigh liom gur cigire a bhí ann." I said to him as we came away: "The whole of this country is hag-ridden by cigiri. We cannot eat our breakfast, or put a lump of coal or a sod of turf on the fire or open or shut our shops or sell our goods or plough our lands or offer crops for sale without the ubiquitous cigire." The ubiquity of the cigire is bad enough, but the universal dishonesty that his arrival has precipitated throughout the land is infinitely worse. The whole country is in a conspiracy to best the cigire. Lies, fraud or any other remedy that will put down an inspector is now considered legitimate throughout the length and breadth of rural Ireland.
Sections 28 and 29 of this Bill swarm with cigirí and they start out on their career with clear notice that they will have to contend with fraud, misrepresentation, falsification of books, and every other recourse which can be had in order to mislead them as to the true liability of a bookmaker whose books they are sent to inspect. Do you think the cigirí will be able to get round the misrepresentation which will take place as to the true liability of each individual bookmaker if the bookmakers made up their minds to get the best of the cigirí? They will not. You will turn every bookmaker in the country, in his own defence, into a bester and a fraud. If he keeps true books, in his heart he will feel that he was the only bookmaker in Ireland who did. He will say to himself: "Why should I pay 100 per cent. of my tax when all the other fellows can get away with 50 per cent. by adapting their accounts a little?" Deputies need not be shocked. We are all familiar with the process of filling up income-tax forms. I venture to say that if I went round to every Deputy who has paid income-tax in his day and asked him to put his hand on a Bible and swear that he never made an ambiguous entry on an income-tax form, he would take his hand off the Bible. This tax will be as heavy a burden on the average bookmaker as income-tax is on the average income-tax payer. Great difficulties will arise in the collection of the tax and it will make the work of the bookmaker standing under his umbrella on the course almost impossible. At the back of this Bill and in the minds of those who were advising the Minister when he drafted it, is the belief that the Bill will ultimately mean the end of the bookmakers on the racecourses of Ireland. I believe that the purpose of those promoting this Bill is to drive the bookmakers off the racecourses. I would issue this warning—the gentlemen who are concerned to do that are failing to see the wood for the trees.
Racing in this country depends on the men and women who go to races for a day's outing. If you restrict the crowds attending race meetings to those interested in horse flesh in a scientific way and in form and the like, race meetings will be very sparsely attended. The average individual going out for an evening's sport is not going out in the hope of making a living out of it, he is not going out professing to be a critic of horse flesh but in the hope of finding some fellow with a good tip, who will give him the tip before the bookmaker hears of it. Painful experience has taught him that, even then, it will be damn little good unless he can catch a poor gom of a bookmaker before the bookmaker knows as much as he knows. He very rarely succeeds, but he gets a bit of a thrill out of it and comes home a sadder and a wiser man as a general rule—unless the favourite falls and, providentially, it sometimes does.
If you put the bookmaker off the course, by removing all that excitement and colour from the racecourses, a very large percentage—more than 50 per cent.—of those who attend race meetings will cease to attend them. It will no longer be a day out. If that happens, I do not care what prices you have, what race boards you have, what amenities for horses, trainers and jockeys you have, racing will die in this country and, if racing dies, the horse-breeding industry here will die, too. In the last analysis, the horse-breeding industry depends on the mug, the person who attends the race meeting for the fun of it. The hub of that fun is the bookmaker's umbrella. I am convinced that this Bill is designed to wipe out the umbrella. These gentlemen think that it is better policy to run racing on the parimutuel system, as it is easier to collect the race board's revenue out of the Tote than it is from the bookmaker. I believe they have sold that idea to a great many people in this country who ought to know better, people who have been racing all their lives, who believe themselves to be deeply concerned with the horse-breeding industry and the success of the export trade.
I do not want to over-state my case, but very often what sounds a paradox is, in fact, the truth—the horse-breeding industry ultimately depends on the bookmaker's umbrella. Destroy the picturesque character of racing as a sport and you will reduce its supporters to such meagre dimensions that the sport will die. Mind you, sports have died out in this world because the picturesque surroundings associated with them vanished and the bare execution of the sport ceased to attract —or, at least, ceased to attract a sufficient section of the community to justify the maintenance of the sport. Racing as a sport might or might not be a social loss, but the horse-breeding industry would be a very severe economic loss to this country if it should be injured. It depends on racing for its successful maintenance; racing is its shop window—racing and international horse jumping are the two shop windows, the twin branches of the breeding industry.
Suppose you had the International Horse Jumping Competitions conducted in a fifty-acre field, with none of the trappings of the Royal Dublin Society about it, how many people would come to those jumping competitions? What makes that crowded function a success? What makes the horse shows in New York and other places crowded fashionable functions, to which everybody goes, and which creates the market for the class of horse, the jumper or the hunter, which is displayed there? Is it not the pageantry associated with them? Do not misunderstand me. I know that people who use these horses and buy them are the "huntin' men," the "huntin', shootin' and fishin' men," but the people who want to sell that class of horse bring those men to their stables and their studs by the publicity that they get at the shows. They make of the shows the biggest parade that they possibly can. It is the picturesqueness of the whole business which makes the shop window of the show-ground effective for the hunting class of horse; it is the picturesqueness of the racecourse which draws the crowds to see the racehorses and gives the publicity requisite to the breeder of racehorses to secure the custom from all over the world that we had in the past.
Let not the efficient experts of this country, the five-year planners, embark upon their plans without having carefully considered every aspect of this matter. They may know much more about horse flesh and pedigrees and training secrets and the practice of the course, but they do not know half as much as I know of the mentality of the ordinary racegoer, who would not know one end of a horse from another. Let them beware lest, in their desire for success, they destroy what they seek to strengthen. I want to make racing a prominent, legitimate and agreeable amusement for the people of this country, partly for their legitimate entertainment but mainly so that we may have a good shop window wherein to sell our bloodstock to the world. I go so far as to affirm the paradox: the racehorse-breeding industry ultimately depends on the bookmaker's umbrella. Close one and, sooner or later, you will close the other. Pursue the policies laid down in this Bill and you will close the bookmaker's umbrella and it may be then too late to save the horse-breeding industry in this country.
