HORSE Racing Ireland’s reported €7 million per year slice of the media rights pie will come under scrutiny from the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture next Wednesday.

The Committee, which consists of TDs and senators from all sides of the Oireachtas, has requested that senior figures from HRI make themselves available for questioning on Wednesday, along with a delegation from United Irish Racecourses [UIR], the group of five tracks which has opted out of the next media rights deal with Sports Information Services and Racecourse Media Group.

It has also been reported that the matter will be discussed on Thursday by the Public Accounts Committee but HRI had received no notification of this by 5pm yesterday.

The Agriculture Committee, which consists of TDs and senators from all sides of the Oireachtas, has requested that senior figures from HRI make themselves available for questioning on Wednesday, along with a delegation from United Irish Racecourses [UIR], the group of five tracks which has opted out of the next media rights deal with Sports Information Services and Racecourse Media Group.

The UIR tracks - Limerick, Kilbeggan, Roscommon, Sligo and Thurles - say that the new five-year deal favours larger tracks as payments are partially based on betting turnover. They also say HRI is taking too great a share of the reported €47 million per annum deal as the creator of the fixture list, which is referred to as “owner of the data rights”.

According to UIR, the deal is “disproportionate and lacks transparency”. They say HRI is awarding itself a significant portion of the revenues when it is only the facilitator and is already well-funded by Government.

Earlier this month, the UIR tracks declined to sign the deal and expressed a desire to negotiate a separate arrangement with Arena Racecourse Company [ARC] who have offered to pay a minimum of €100,000 per fixture.

However, under legislation, any media rights deals for racecourses must be negotiated by Horse Racing Ireland’s Media Rights Committee. That five-person committee is chaired by Punchestown CEO Conor O’Neill and the committee also includes HRI chairman Nicky Hartery.

Following the defection of the UIR tracks, HRI chief executive Suzanne Eade said: “Any attempt to paint the tender process as unfair, or the distribution model unjust, is either lacking a basic understanding of the media rights landscape or is misrepresenting the facts.”

According to a report in The Irish Examiner the Oireachtas hearing will be held behind closed doors, at the request of HRI, due to the commercially sensitive nature of the deal.

Also this week the Public Accounts Committee requested a meeting with officials from the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board [IHRB] on June 29th. The PAC wants to ask why the IHRB does not publish details of the salary and other benefits paid to its chief executive.

According to the IHRB’s latest directors’ report issued last December, this exemption from the Code of Compliance for State Bodies was agreed with the Department of Agriculture.

Earlier this year it was revealed that former IHRB chief executive Denis Egan was paid €385,000 when he took early retirement in 2021. This sum was 58% more than the maximum permitted under the IHRB’s own early retirement scheme.

The IHRB told the PAC that the money used for the Egan payment came from Turf Club funds. It was also revealed that the current IHRB chief executive Darragh O’Loughlin, is on a salary of €180,000.