Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 6 November 2024
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Governance Issues: Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (Resumed)
5:30 pm
Mr. Darragh O'Loughlin:
We detected no other inappropriate transaction. That transaction of €350,000, which was transferred from the Jockeys Emergency Fund to the IHRB bank account, was an improper, inappropriate and unauthorised transaction.
We were reassured that we had asked for Mazars to scrutinise all of our financial transactions and financial records going back to the establishment of the IHRB at the beginning of 2018, and they found no other similar transactions. I just wanted to clarify that.
With regard to how this happened, unfortunately I do not believe it was an inappropriate or accidental pushing of a wrong button. This is a step that was proactively taken in a particular set of circumstances and, as I said in the opening statement, it should not have happened.