THE Association of Irish Racehorse Owners [AIRO] has called on Horse Racing Ireland [HRI] to improve prize money levels in 2025.

Speaking at the Association’s awards night, AIRO chairman David Hyland said: “One of our major focuses for the next year is to lobby for more prize money. Our prize money levels have remained stagnant for many years with many races in the middle tier of both codes not seeing any increase since 2008.

“We must also address why blacktype prize money, reduced during Covid, has not been restored to its pre-Covid levels. This is unacceptable and is an issue that we consistently address with HRI. Prize money is key to ensuring that Ireland is viewed as a country to own and race horses in. We need to stay competitive with good prize money if we are to remain world leaders in this industry.”

HRI is expected to publish some details of its 2025 prize money plans following its December 16th board meeting.

In 2024 HRI budgeted for total prize money to increase by 2% but, because of a planned increase in the number of fixtures, individual race values would not change.

HRI has been allocated 4.1% extra in funding by the Government for 2025.

Restricted races

In July HRI revealed plans to stage 60 National Hunt races in 2025 which would be restricted to trainers who had fewer than 50 winners in either of the previous two seasons. However, following representations from some of the bigger trainers who would be excluded from these races, HRI has changed course.

In a statement given to The Irish Field, HRI said: “HRI has listened to concerns regarding the series and will engage in a consultative process with industry stakeholder bodies in Q1 next year. The consultation’s objective is to identify the best route forward to strengthen and sustain the National Hunt programme, which includes the possibility of a 60 restricted race series in 2025, along with other potential initiatives.

“Seventeen (17) of these races have been published in the Provisional Summary of races from January 1st and further races would only be programmed following the consultation process on the future direction of the National Hunt programme.”

Irish racing already had a similar series of 17 races which are restricted to trainers with defined levels of success over previous seasons.

At the time of the original announcement, John Fitzgerald, head of the Restricted Trainers Association [RTA], said that the series did not go far enough and that HRI should consider a tiered system which would see some races programmed for trainers who have had 20 winners or less.

This week Fitzgerald said: “Introducing a block of 60 races with the same criteria was probably not the best way to go about helping small trainers. I’m happy that we have 17 restricted races and I think this can be improved and tweaked as we go on, depending on how these races fill and many other variables, but we still have to be able to balance racing better, going forward, and continually review, listen and be more creative.”

The RTA, which claims to represent over 250 trainers, has also expressed its dissatisfaction with the recently-published Forvis Mazars report into financial irregularities in the accounts of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board [IHRB].

The report confirmed that the IHRB had taken €350,000 from the Jockeys Emergency Fund in 2022 to cover a cash shortfall. The money was repaid within three months. The report also revealed serious differences between HRI and the IHRB over a retirement payment made to outgoing IHRB chief executive Denis Egan at around that time.

Fitzgerald said: “I’ve been getting a lot of calls from members who are genuinely concerned about how this affair will affect the future of racing. We see IHRB officials punishing trainers for rule breaches and damaging racing’s integrity, so it is frustrating to see the IHRB themselves bringing so much bad publicity to racing regarding integrity.

“The RTA is calling on the Minister for Agriculture to initiate a full and independent review of the IHRB’s governance and regulatory practices, one that extends beyond the Mazars report to address systemic issues within the Board’s structure. This review would ensure that Irish racing is governed by an institution capable of upholding the highest standards of honesty and transparency.”