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

Photo of Joe FlahertyJoe Flaherty (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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Horse racing has a good many friends within this House at the minute but this might not always be the case. IHRB certainly must ramp up what it is doing in anti-doping. It is increasingly an issue among the general public. Most of us who grew up in rural Ireland fully support horse racing and country pursuits, and we enthusiastically support them and follow them, but there is an onus on IHRB to ramp up what it is doing on doping. I understand that this will present issues for IHRB in respect of staffing and resources. I am aware it is not straightforward to take a sample off a horse and that it is multifaceted but there is an onus to ramp it up.

On the initiative IHRB undertook with the British Horseracing Authority, BHA, was this initiated by that authority or was it a collective meeting of minds to do that around the Cheltenham Festival?