Numbers Game

You have to hand it to British racing, with all the issues facing the sport across the water at the moment, they are still world leaders at putting on a show.

Royal Ascot is a tremendous spectacle. High class racing mixed with glitz, glamour, pomp and ceremony is an irresistible combination and with 273,526 people turning up over the five days it bucks the trend of falling attendances at the other big racing festivals.

It’s refreshing to hear no talk of tweaking with the format, no mention of a cost of living crisis impacting on the numbers, no one moaning about the ticket prices. Royal Ascot success affords it immunity.

The lowest attendance across the week was 40,136 on Wednesday, but to put that number into perspective, it is still double the crowd the Curragh will attract over the entire Derby Festival this weekend.

From an Irish perspective it was an incredibly successful week with 10 of the 35 races won by Irish-trained horses. 21 of the week’s winners were bred in Ireland.

In total 24 Irish trainers had runners across the week and 5 were successful. Aidan O’Brien was the star performer with six winners and there was one apiece for his two sons Joseph and Donnacha as well as wins for Willie Mullins and Ger Keane.

Last week the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee held a session with the three bodies tasked with the care, welfare and promotion of thoroughbreds in Ireland - its own Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine (DAFM), Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) and the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB).

The latter two outfits were back again to answer questions in relation to their 2022 financial accounts, but representatives from all three organisations were also grilled about the Prime Time Investigates programme which aired on RTÉ the previous week.

Not to bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the entire three hour session, here is a synopsis of some of the more interesting aspects of the exchanges in relation to both the content of the TV programme and the two horse racing bodies’ 2022 accounts -

When it comes to horse welfare in Ireland HRI has no direct responsibility. The IHRB has responsibility for thoroughbreds from the moment they enter training until their career ends, but has nothing to do with them after that point.

The Department of Agriculture has overall responsibility for animal welfare, including that of thoroughbreds, throughout their lives.

In 2013 there were four licensed horse slaughter plants in Ireland which killed 24,000 horses a year. Up to last week, when the facility in Straffan had its operations suspended, there was just one licensed slaughter plant, killing less than 2,000 horses a year.

Surprisingly, no one asked the question, what has been the fate of the other 22,000 horses each year?

The Dept. of Agriculture did not suspend the operations at the abattoir in Straffan on welfare grounds, it was done because of traceability issues.

According to the Dept. of Agriculture the standards within the slaughter plant were very good and they have never seen sick, emaciated or seriously lame horses presented to the slaughter facility. The adjoining lairage or shed, where RTÉ filmed the abuses of horses taking place, is typically empty except on Tuesdays and Wednesdays when horses arrive for slaughter in the abattoir.

One person involved in the Straffan Abattoir has a prior criminal conviction for cruelty to animals dating back to 2012. This conviction would have prevented that person from working in a similar facility for up to three years, but after that period it was no longer relevant.

The Dept. of Agriculture inspected the farm adjoining the abattoir in Straffan on five occasions between 2018 and 2023 on foot of complaints received from members of the public regarding animal welfare, but on each occasion they found nothing that warranted further action.

The suspension of activities at the abattoir means that those requiring the slaughter of their horses must now travel them abroad, which presents a whole new set of welfare issues for the Dept. of Agriculture and the horses themselves.

Moving on to financial matters pertaining to the 2022 annual accounts for HRI, the costs associated with the Curragh Racecourse redevelopment were once again a hot topic.

HRI has pumped €45 million into the Curragh and in return now holds a 37.2% stake in the business, Curragh Racecourse Limited.

The total cost of redeveloping the Curragh Racecourse in 2019 was €81.2 million, but since then HRI has loaned money to the business and these loans have now been converted into additional shares.

HRI is also incurring an annual loss of €1.4 million due to depreciation of its Curragh asset and it is forecast to take another five years before their revenues from Curragh Racecourse Limited will cancel out this annual loss.

HRI spent €500,000 on the long term rental of a corporate box at the Curragh Racecourse.

Suzanne Eade, CEO of HRI, mentioned on more than one occasion during the session that the Curragh Racecourse is contributing a higher percentage than other racecourses to their prize money. I presume this is across the board, rather than simply in relation to one race, the Irish Cesarewitch, which has seen increased prize money for the last two years instigated by a former chairman of HRI.

Moving on to IHRB and the “issue of grave concern” which their CEO Darragh O’Loughlin brought to the attention of the Public Accounts Committee at a similar hearing almost exactly one year ago.

On that occasion O’Loughlin told the Committee that in preparing to appear in front of the Oireachtas hearing he discovered something within the accounts that had set off alarm bells within his organisation. At that stage he offered no details other than to say an independent audit by Mazars was about to commence.

12 months on and the independent audit is still ongoing, but at least we now know what it relates to. It turns out that in January 2022 a sum of €350,000 was moved from the Jockeys’ Emergency Fund to IHRB’s own bank account. In April that year the same sum was returned to the Jockeys’ Emergency Fund.

The Jockeys’ Emergency Fund is a charity for which IHRB provides an administration service. The purpose of the fund is to look after the medical and social care for two former jockeys who suffered catastrophic injuries while riding.

On foot of the discovery of this highly unusual financial activity the Chief Financial Officer of the IHRB went on voluntary leave. It has now been clarified that this leave has been on full pay for the last year, circa €120,000.

The Corporate Governance within the IHRB at the time of the money transfers required two signatures in order for the money to move accounts. With only one employee of IHRB on voluntary leave we can assume that the second signatory is not a current member of staff.

These transfers of money out and into the Jockey Emergency Fund took place during the period after long-term CEO Denis Egan availed of a voluntary redundancy scheme in September 2021,l but before current CEO Darragh O’Loughlin took over the reins in June 2022.

In other money matters discussed at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) session we learned that the installation of 500 CCTV cameras at 25 racecourses and its associated monitoring setup has cost €1.86 million.

IHRB representatives consider the cameras to be more for deterrent than detection, but claim to be getting good use out of them as an operational tool.

The Mazar’s audit of the IHRB’s financial accounts, going back to the organisation’s inception in January 2018, is being carried out for a fixed fee of €80,000.

Overall these PAC sessions are extremely important as it is the only forum where the sport’s regulators feel compelled to give straight answers.

The one little thing that does irk me about these sessions is how all sides continually quote (and misquote) the headline figures from the HRI commissioned Social and Economic Impact Report compiled by Deloitte in 2023.

This is the report that says the industry supports 30,350 Full Time Equivalent staff and that the total direct and stimulated expenditure in 2022 was an estimated €2.46 billion.

These numbers are not intended to be accurate reflections and Deloitte themselves stated in the report that “as a simplification of any industry an economic model of this type can only ever be expected to represent an approximation of a real-life outcome.”

Deloitte also clearly stated: “no person other than HRI should place any reliance on this Report” yet it has instantly become the mirage for everything to do with the industry.