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:

Yes. We have had trainers express a concern that we will disadvantage the horse in some way or make the horse nervous. We approach this very carefully. For a start, it is only, as we said earlier, a trained and experienced veterinary officer who takes that blood sample. When we started pre-race testing, it was only me who took those samples because I wanted to stand over the safety and efficacy. That is exactly what happened when we started. I tested thousands.