Irish racing’s regulation is under an increasingly harsh spotlight, with renewed calls for the sport’s integrity to be put under the Horse Racing Ireland administrative umbrella. This is nothing new, and it’s a model widely used around the world. But in an Irish context, such calls smack of a glib exercise in rearranging regulatory deckchairs on a sinking ship.
There’s bureaucratic logic to amalgamating a beleaguered Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board into a single semi-state body responsible for the entire sector. It can hardly be claimed that the British Horseracing Authority and France Galop are holed under the water for bringing all management strands into a single entity.
Theoretically at least, it’s a model that would make racing here more accountable too. The IHRB is always open to charges of being a largely amateur self-elected club policing a sector worth almost €2.5 billion to the country every year. Their hypothetical defence of how important it is to separate regulation from promotion falls down on how the IHRB is mostly funded through HRI.
But whatever the theory, it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the practical reality of any merger would amount to little more than an operational exercise in reconfiguring office space.
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Regulatory personnel would move, letterheads would change, the website might get a facelift, maybe a fancy new mission statement to top things off. Most of it, though, would be little more than changing the name of the licensee above the door. That might be what Irish racing’s great and good want. But the long-term health of the great game needs much more than that.
It’s a dozen years since any smug assumptions about doping being a problem for other jurisdictions rather than here got blown out of the water
Why there might be such a division is no mystery. Irish racing’s powerbase is an oligarch of leading owners, breeders and trainers. Their expertise and investment produce levels of success that reverberate around the globe. Those interests propel policy, so maybe it’s too much to expect them to radically alter regulation of a sector that they’ve mastered and they largely control.
That a drastic revamp of racing’s integrity service is required can hardly be debated any more. The circumstances surrounding jockey Philip Byrnes’s controversial unseating from Redwood Queen at Wexford last May, and what emerged following his subsequent exoneration from any wrongdoing, are just the latest evidence of regulatory motion being mistaken for action.
The detritus of that case underlines how flimsy a deterrent the IHRB currently appears to present.
The British Horseracing Authority finished providing vital monitoring of betting patterns to the IHRB last summer. The Irish regulator went to tender to provide a new analysis provider. The process still isn’t finished. It begs the question as to who’s keeping an eye on things in the meantime. What’s certain is that the BHA didn’t submit a tender for the new contract. Privately, officials in Britain shake their heads at the IHRB’s integrity division.
The regulator’s former head of security and investigations, Chris Gordon, was a cog in the original BHA deal to monitor betting. The former Garda superintendent, along with his deputy, Declan Buckley, was made redundant by the IHRB in December. Gordon’s successful defamation action against the Racehorse Trainers Association underlined his readiness to step on toes. The IHRB has opted to scrap the positions both men held. That begs questions too.
It can hardly be claimed that the British Horseracing Authority and France Galop are holed under the water for bringing all management strands into a single entity
Rather than some logistical shuffle, what’s ultimately required is a volte face of mindset to make Irish racing’s regulation fit for purpose.
It’s a dozen years since any smug assumptions about doping being a problem for other jurisdictions rather than here got blown out of the water. Many more incidents since then have brutally underlined the scale of the task in providing an effective deterrence against cheats and wrongdoers. But much of the sector still seems content for regulation to remain little more than a flimsy figleaf, an exercise in appearance rather than substance.
Last week, the Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon turned the sod to begin work on a new all-weather circuit at Tipperary. HRI is borrowing €34 million to finance a project which many in the sport wonder might necessary at all. In its 2026 budget, HRI allocated €17.8 million to integrity services, up just €500,000 on last year.
That’s a policy decision produced by a body that basically reflects what the various sectional interests it’s supposed to oversee want. No change of masthead will change the mindset behind it.
The public is entitled to ask why racing’s bigwigs are happy to maintain such a status quo. Perhaps the lack of a direct link between the sport’s funding and betting turnover encourages such an ambivalent attitude to policing. Other jurisdictions do everything to maintain the confidence of those betting on their product, because it’s in their own interests to do so. That isn’t the case in Ireland. Or at least, not yet; public subsidy can’t be taken for granted forever.
That a drastic revamp of racing’s integrity service is required can hardly be debated any more
Regulation and integrity have been so far down racing’s pecking order of priorities for too long. A remorseless focus on prize money ultimately panders to an elite already prospering, and it’s at the cost of industry foundations taken for granted elsewhere but still notable for their absence here. Public confidence demands best practice, and Irish racing is miles off it.
It leaves the sport a hostage to fortune. No change of name will fix that.
Something for the Weekend
Conditions will be ultra-testing at Fairyhouse tomorrow, and although the course chase winner VAUREAL (2.05) is 1lb out of the handicap proper in a hurdle contest, he is at the right end of the weights.
In comparison, the going at Kempton will be very decent considering how wet it has been, and that’s good news for CHANCE ANOTHER ONE (3.35) in the hugely valuable handicap chase. One of two Emmet Mullins runners, he is a course and distance winner in November and is back to three miles after a couple of efforts at shorter distances.
