NO disagreements are rumbling on between Horse Sport Ireland and the Irish Horse Board and nothing is impeding progress for the industry in this regard.

That’s what Tipperary TD Martin Browne (SF) was informed when he asked Horse Sport Ireland’s delegation before the Joint Oireachtas Agriculture Committee what was the relationship like now between HSI and the Irish Horse Board.

CEO of Horse Sport Ireland Denis Duggan replied: “There is no disagreement at the moment. The DAFM organised the tender to the IHB since January. Some of our staff had options of transferring. IHB are actively marketing. We met with them recently, most recently last week, and are trying to arrange future meetings. There is nothing stopping progress.”

Asked what HSI is doing to restore public confidence, Duggan replied: “Our Roadshow around the country is engaging with breeders, all breeders are invited to attend. We attend shows. We are funding almost 60 shows around the country. This is part of the journey of rebuilding trust and confidence in the organisation and making sure that the community we serve are familiar with the schemes and grants.”

Questioned on equine welfare and doping, the CEO said: “Horse welfare is at the centre of all we do. Unlike Horse Racing Ireland or the IHRB, we don’t possess any statutory powers to prosecute people for any welfare issue. Our role is the promotion of standards.”

Head of Sport, Legal and Governance at Horse Sport Ireland, Avalon Everett detailed: “We run a national anti-doping programme. We complete about 120 test samples per year. We have no jurisdiction for out of competition testing. We are trying to work on the number of horses tested.”

Head of Breeding and Innovation at HSI, Dr Sonja Egan, spoke on equine traceability, saying: “We are making strides, we have a very significant project on changing over horses’ DNA to SNP snips testing, which is the gold standard. We have an element of health monitoring. We want to bring on board bio-therm chips, these can also monitor temperature over time and helps with welfare. We would like to roll this out, it improves the traceability of animals in our sector.”

Cultural transformation

Senator Victor Boyhan (Ind) raised what progress HSI may be making on ‘cultural transformation’ and was assured by the CEO that Horse Sport Ireland was committed to improving both the internal and external culture in the organisation.

“We need to walk the walk, we need to make sure that our team internally is the same as the teams we send out to Paris [Olympics]. We recruited a HR manager last year for the first time to support staff and managers.

“We have broken down internal silos, there is now a greater flow of communication, and externally, how we interact with our customer base and how we interact with the sport,” said Denis Duggan.