THE Irish Horse World’s year got underway as 2023 ended, with Lesley Hunter-Nolan editing these pages until the return from maternity leave in June of Judith Faherty.

Judith might have regretted her timing, as the first thing she had to do was write two reports and an editorial in the issue of Saturday, June 15th on the abattoir and practices, which had featured the previous Wednesday in the RTÉ Investigates documentary Horses – Making a Killing.

‘Failure to our horses’ caught readers’ eyes over Faherty’s editorial comment, while ‘Shannonside Foods under a legal notice’ and ‘NIHB “rely” on truthful vet certificates’ meant the topics of ‘alleged tampering of the identity of horses as well as extreme cases of animal cruelty’ could not be ignored. It was more of the same, or connected, the following Saturday; ‘Tough week of questioning for the DAFM’, ‘Shannonside welfare complaints were not upheld – DAFM’ and ‘DAFM not confident with passport system’.

More to Faherty’s liking was the countdown to the Olympic Games in Paris, with the first of her extensive previews appearing in the issue of July 6th and each Saturday thereafter until the equestrian disciplines at the Games started at the end of July.

From then on, there were comprehensive and extended reports from Versailles on the dressage, eventing and show jumping competitions from the Games, followed by the Paralympics dressage.