Un De Sceaux© Photo Healy Racing
On the back of the bureaucratic cock-up that has racing in a state over stable staff working hours it is safe to say the ball was dropped in a major way when a change in the definition of 'agriculture' was passed into law without anyone, it seems, appreciating its implications. The pace of legislative change is glacial precisely in order to avoid such cock-ups. Yet the 2015 amendment to employment law was allowed sail through without anyone in the system shouting 'whoa.' Why?
Right now that question has been parked as all hands fire-fight the immediate problem of trying to square the circle of conforming to working time law while addressing a staff shortage widely described as being at crisis levels.
The crisis isn't apparently so much in terms of pay and conditions but rather expertise. There aren't enough suitable staff anyway so it's not just a case of hiring more people to meet working hours requirements. The wage-slaves among us might be tempted to say better pay and conditions would encourage more expertise but that can be parked for the time being too.
Horse Racing Ireland insist they knew nothing of the 2015 amendment as it happened. They also say the Department of Agriculture was caught unawares. Some pressing 'why' and 'how' questions need to be asked about that.
Apparently there's been quite a lot of bureaucratic buck-passing going on subsequently between Agriculture, the Department of Business, Enterprise & Innovation, which introduced the legislation, the Department of Employment Affairs & Social Protection, which sounds a reasonable home for this too, and even Transport, Tourism & Sport, as to where this political hot potato should land.
At least HRI has established it is indeed Heather Humphries in Business, Enterprise & Innovation that has the giving of a vital derogation from a strict interpretation of the legislation that could potentially clean this up at least to some extent.
It's a clean-up that ultimately requires convincing the authorities racing really is different. Not so different as to excuse some of the worst work practises that have become ingrained. But still different. The mantra that racing isn't a 9 to 5 job is wearing thin but not so thin as to be irrelevant.
It plainly isn't 9 to 5. And just as plain is that normal work practises don't apply. The hours put in by some staff in terms of travelling to and from evening racing for instance isn't just a straight-forward exercises in employers exploiting employees. Going racing, and especially taking horses they look after to the races, is widely regarded as a perk of job for stable staff. They also get paid extra.
So this problem is a lot more complex than some condescending cartoon of oppressed stable waifs finally sticking it to 'The Man.'
Derogation from strict implementation of the legislation is all very well but it requires compensatory measures. And from what I understand that can't just be about more money. It comes back to time, which in turn goes back to an absence of sufficiently expert people, and that goes back to long term planning for the recruitment and then retention of quality staff.
That task doesn't have to be all about pay and time-off. For instance the dream of becoming of race-riding attracts a lot of young people into the sport. More and more of them are women. That trend could be encouraged even further by increased race-riding opportunities for female apprentices, maybe even the adoption of an allowance system which was produced such dividends in France.
By definition that's a long-term consideration though. More immediate uncertainty is such that there's speculation about the new legislation even impacting on the fixture list, particularly in relation to evening racing, Sunday racing and Friday night racing. That may be alarmist, and employed strategically to an extent, but there's no doubt the sport is spooked.
What trainers want is to be able to allocate time off a lot more flexibly than staff automatically being off for 11 hours after a working day. The key word remains flexibility and a lot of them are rattled enough to encourage hopes that the 'f' word might be much more of a two-way street. The job now is convincing Heather Humphries and her cabinet colleagues of the merits of that argument.
That's a context to make Joe Keeling's pre-Christmas comments about members of the cabinet requiring courage supplements seem all the more unfortunate. But while the lobbying goes on, it would be appropriate too to try and find out how such a regrettable situation was allowed occur in the first place.
There's been considerable coverage of how the former Galway GAA player Mark Hehir pleaded guilty in the Circuit Court last week to the theft over €250,000 from his employer after initially becoming addicted to online gambling on his phone in secondary school.
On ten occasions during a six month period in 2016 Hehir transferred sums of €39,435, €34,580, €34,580, €30,000, €22,242, €20,000, €8,016, €4,134, €2,279 and €1,200 from the employer's account to his own which he then gambled with a number of bookmakers, mostly online.
During the hearing Hehir's lawyer named two firms that his client had online accounts with and asked a Garda detective who had investigated the case: "Was any investigation done as to how this had occurred? How a young man with limited means was capable of betting this sort of money?" The response was brief - "No."
Yet online firms can investigate with algorithmic precision any punter making even a slight profit and impose restrictions on that punter should they see fit. The advice to stop if it stops being fun apparently doesn't apply to everyone.
Finally, what a horse this Un De Sceaux is. He might have won as soft an open Grade One as has been run in some time when completing a historic hat-trick at Ascot at the weekend but he has built up a superb record over the years.
What everyone in Willie Mullins's yard remarks upon is the enthusiasm with which the ten year still attacks his life as a racehorse. He might be getting older but at home his two speeds apparently still remain stopped and flat out.
It was noticeable though how much more tractable he seems to be in his races now and it makes the prospect of a third Cheltenham festival success in March very real indeed. He needs two more top-flight wins to reach 10 Grade One victories. A lot of people will be willing him on his way.
