Reclaim Irish Horse Co-Op and start again

Dear Madam,

ONCE again this week the only mainstream media coverage of the equine industry was negative. But it got me thinking of our breeders’ Co-Op. Where is the money going?

I was the person who raised the “cash cow” situation at the A.G.M of the Horse Co-Op in Mallow last month. Unfortunately the letters in your paper since have not told the whole story of the 2008 E.G.M night, where we, the breeders, lost control to the HSI.

On that night, some shareholders were not allowed into the meeting as they had not their membership paid (never happened before at a Co-Op meeting) and all the people on the four buses, arranged by the HSI, were allowed to vote. The late Joe Walsh was the chairman at the time.

Since that night, it seems the breeder has been funding the HSI and their worldwide junkets. In the past few years, the HSI spending has gone way out of hand. With top-class PR and marketing firms sent out to Wellington, Florida, for example, promoting the backing of personalities and not one mention of Irish Horses. We, as the breeders, funded that. How much did that cost us? Another huge cost that baffles me is the funding of the enormous legal fees, for no-win situations and once more, the horses in question were foreign-owned and born and bred.

The Horse Board had established the young horses classes, young mare and stallion inspections, which were properly funded by the Co-Op. Now we have lost the young mare funding and the stallion inspections are up in the air.

REVENUE

Prior to the handover, we had 9,000 members, breeding just under 7,000 foals per year. We had all that revenue plus State and EU funding, the total was in the region of €3 million. We also had employees, paid for by the Department of Agriculture, to facilitate the passport and inspections procedures.

Now we are on the “hind teat”, getting only the crumbs from our own table.

As Sport Horse breeders, we have very little in common with most of the other HSI affiliates, we are the “cash cow”.

I am asking what the others brought to the HSI table? It is time that we come to terms that we are part of a failed experiment. There is a growing list of people looking for a share in a small pot of money.

I say, as a breeder and stallion owner, we have to reclaim our Co-Op and our share capital and start again.

Yours etc,

William Kennedy

Kennedy Equine Centre

Tralee

Co. Kerry