THE Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has allocated the sport horse sector €5.2 million in Budget 2025. This is a decrease of €250,000 on the 2024 funding.

Answering a query from The Irish Field, a DAFM spokesperson said: “The budget includes a provision of €5.2 million for the sport horse industry, which will be allocated to the contractors for delivering certain services to the sport horse industry on behalf of the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

“In particular, the €5.2 million provision includes €4.4 million (€1.5 million operational and €2.9 million breeding initiatives) for the delivery of breeding services and €800,000 for the delivery of marketing services. The contractors for delivering these services to the Department are Horse Sport Ireland (Breeding) and the Irish Horse Board (marketing).”

The splitting of the tenders for breeding and marketing services in 2022 meant each tender contract had an annual budget amount specified until 2027.

HSI is also funded by Sport Ireland, the authority tasked with the development of sport in Ireland. That allocation will be announced in early 2025.

As for the racing industry, the Horse and Greyhound Fund will now receive €99.1 million.

This is a 4.3% increase, up from €95 million last year. A total of €79.3 million has been directed to horse racing.

The first year of funding has also been allocated to the redevelopment of the Irish Equine Centre, located outside Naas in County Kildare. There was an €800,000 increase this year for equine welfare, which has been allocated €3.5 million.