Breeding sector ‘is being destroyed’

MADAM,

As a breeder, I am contacting The Irish Field regarding the impossible situation we are in.

Breeders need studbook passports to maintain the value of their foals at sales, they need passports to move their animals under DAFM legislation. More than anything, they need their passports in advance of the foal sales each year.

For the past two years, breeders have been unable to get passports in a timely manner from the government licenced operator, Horse Sport Ireland.

Last year, it took up to nine months or more, for equine passports to be issued – missing the small window (September to November) to sell foals publicly or privately. Many private sales fell through completely in 2023, due to buyers feeling there was something suspicious with the seller when they couldn’t produce the passport for the foal in a timely manner.

It should be noted that there is no market for yearlings or two-year-old sport horses, so if the foal window is missed, breeders have to retain stock for a further two years.

Breeders brought their foals to sale (legally with their dams) and sold the foal, but received no money for months, due to not having passports processed by this Government-licenced private company.

Horse Sport Ireland for their part, have stated publicly in the Oireachtas that there is no problem, they stated that they experienced small delays last year due to their DNA verification partner Weatherby’s slowness in processing the parentage results for the passports and due to a high turnover in HSI staff.

As reported by the Oireachtas hearing last year, 2023 was told that 75% of all foals going through the sales companies did not have their passports from Horse Sport Ireland in time for the sale.

At the time of writing to you, some of these breeders have yet to receive their passports in late September 2024 – some one year and three or four months later. Such service would not be accepted anywhere else.

New system

The situation is even worse this year – HSI embarked on designing and building a completely new database and registration system late last year. While many breeders have engaged with the new system, they have paid for passports (some three to four times the price of a foal passport in 2021), but they have yet to receive the physical document, which enables them to sell and receive the money for the sale of their foals.

Is it now time that the licence that was provided to Horse Sport Ireland in 2022 is withdrawn by DAFM? The fabric of rural Ireland’s equine sport horse breeding sector is being destroyed by the complete incompetence. The annual income of the farmer breeders involved in sport horse production is being withheld or lost altogether. We are calling for the Minister to take decisive and immediate action to ensure breeders receive their passports within four weeks of payment for the service and that foals can travel to sales or be sold privately this year.

Yours etc,

Linda and Ronan Stynes,

Kildare