Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon (third from right) turns the sod on the all-weather track at Tipperary Racecourse in Ballykisteen earlier this week. Also pictured are Paul Dermody of HRI Racecourses, Sinead Carr of Tipperary County Council, Andrew Hogan of Tipperary Racecourse, Nicky Hartery of HRI and Maurice Maloney of Tipperary Racecourse. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/INPHO
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
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