Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 23 February 2021
Public Accounts Committee
Horse Racing Ireland: Financial Statements 2019
10:00 am
Mr. Brian Kavanagh:
I do not think that is a full analysis. Many of the horses that are winning for the bigger trainers are bred by those breeders the Deputy referred to, the small breeders who are selling their horses to the owners to keep them in training. The other factor is that many of our top trainers started off as small trainers. Our two leading national hunt trainers, Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott, both started with four or five horses in training and have been able to develop their businesses to their current scale. Obviously, the scale of those operations increases the scale of the economic activity and the scale of the trickle-down into the local economy. I mentioned in my introduction that there are 600 jobs in the Bagenalstown area. A number of those would be related to Willie Mullins, a trainer, Jim Bolger, a trainer, and Red Mills horse feeds.
No comments