IRISH Draught breeder and stallion owner Sophie Meehan fears the endangered breed will be lost further due to lengthy delays and errors being made on passports being issued by Horse Sport Ireland.

Meehan stands five Irish Draught stallions at Longwood Stud in Sligo and breeds from 15 mares. Getting in contact with The Irish Field this week, she feared that some of the passports with errors will never be fixed due to owner’s fears. “In fairness, we have gotten a few passports back from Horse Sport Ireland, but we got one this morning and it should be a TIH (Traditional Irish Horse) passport, but the TIH sticker isn’t on it.

“I would say there’ll be a lot of incorrect passports that will just be left in circulation because HSI has turned them into such a commodity. Once you get your hands on them, you don’t want to send them back. We are keeping this mare, so I will get it fixed.”

Meehan feels breeders were not kept up to date. “In the past, it was the stallion cover cert that generated the marking kit, but now the owner has to go on and register the foal to get the marking kit, but people didn’t know that. We had so many calls all summer saying ‘you mustn’t have done my covering cert because I never got my marking charts’, but they had to order it themselves.”

Most worrying for Meehan are the number of breeders that are going down the route of an alternative passport issuing service at the cost of the Irish Draught breed. “A lot of breeders are telling me they are going to use Leisure Horse Ireland because it’s cheaper and it’s quicker, but from an Irish Draught perspective, you will get a full pedigree passport, DNA tested, but LHI can’t classify it into a studbook. The Irish Draught already has a small gene pool, they’re classified as endangered, so we can’t afford to be losing any of the breeding herd.”

Numbers update

HSI released an update on the numbers of passports issued on Friday night.

It said 464 foal passports were issued in seven day, bringing the number completed to 2,511. A further 90 ‘other services’ passports (including change of ownership, and endorsement and importations) have been issued.

There has been a total of 6,204 foal passport applications received through Horse Source, of which 5,831 are pedigree applications.

To date, 3,994 foal kits have been returned from breeders to HSI for pedigree applications, with the number of pedigree foal passports issued to breeders now 2,237.

A further 274 non-pedigree applications have also been completed, bringing the total to 2,511.