“SOME 44 key recommendations were unveiled in a blueprint report on the Irish Horse Industry launched this week by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine which addressed major issues such as equine welfare, traceability, funding and breeding,” wrote Isabel Hurley in the January 30th issue of The Irish Field.

This report received regular coverage throughout the year, as did the weather, the independent review of Horse Sport Ireland, Reaching New Heights and the search for increased funding. Worryingly on the decrease, we were informed, is the number of top-class traditional show jumping mares in the country. We learned of the partnership between the Warmblood Studbook of Ireland and the KoninklijkWarmbloed Paardenstamboek Nederland.

Other subjects often reported on were HSI’s on-off stallion inspections, rankings and ratings, equine discussion groups, rows in the Connemara world, helmet standards, the FEI’s investigation into endurance racing, conferences and clinics, Show Jumping Ireland fee increases, Brexit, sales and exports and tack thefts.

There was the FEI’s enquiry into Penelope Leprevost’s treatment of her horse Vagabond de la Pomme during an incident while warming up at the World Cup finals in Gothenburg in late March before, later in the year and still on-going, another into the death of Kevin Coleman’s mount Flogas Sunset Cruise during exercise in Cagnes-Sur-Mer.

As this country celebrated the centenary of the 1916 Rising, the horse world was involved through the participation in the Dublin Easter Sunday parade of five members of the Army Equitation School led by Lieutenant Colonel Brian MacSweeney whose last official function this was as Officer Commanding of the School. In May, having been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Tom Freyne officially took over from McSweeney and, the following month, the School celebrated 90 years in existence.

And, as Horse Sport Ireland bid adieu to chief executive Damien McDonald, who is taking over the role as director general of the Irish Farmers Association, Caitriona Murphy left the position of editor of the Irish Horse World to join our sister paper, the Irish Farmers Journal, with Isabel Hurley taking up the reins in the IHW.