Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 29 November 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Governance Issues: Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (Resumed)

Dr. Lynn Hillyer:

Our policy in general terms is to make sure that all winners are sampled in order to protect them. The majority of those sampled are winners but we also have a very strong policy of selecting non-routine or non-winning animals. They are sampled either pre-race with a blood or hair sample or post race with a urine sample.

We mix up what we have available to us in order, as Mr. O'Loughlin said, to cover the horses in the way we think is strategic, sampling-wise.