Dr. Sonja Egan:

The promotion of Irish horses comes back to some of the breeding initiatives and schemes we run through the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which champions the breeding of Irish horses and Irish-registered horses, and equally it involves the breeders themselves recognising those good breeding decisions. Improving the breeding programme comes back to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine's single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP, transition fund or how we are changing our DNA analysis. This is looking to replicate what the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation has done with cattle. It has developed genomic breeding values which provide an evidence basis for cattle breeders to make the decisions to produce cattle, whether in increasing the macronutrient or protein outputs in milk yield, fertility, etc. We want to be in a position where we can provide Irish breeders with those types of data in order to improve breeding decision-making and produce better Irish-bred horses.