Horse Sport Ireland, HSI, deeply appreciates the invitation from the Chairman and members of the committee to attend and discuss challenges facing the horse sport industry and update the committee on our progress since we were last before it in June. We will provide updates on progress in a number of initiatives and outline some challenges we have experienced.
I am pleased to inform the committee that, since June, HSI’s high-performance programme for athletes in showjumping and eventing has delivered substantial successes to Team Ireland equestrian. Our showjumping team, managed by Michael Blake, won a silver medal at the European Championships and event rider Austin O’Connor won the prestigious Maryland 5 Star last month in the United States. Our underage squads have continued their tremendous successes at young riders, juniors and children age levels in jumping, dressage and eventing.
Prior to 2008, international high-performance sport was managed by Showjumping Ireland, Eventing Ireland and Dressage Ireland at all levels. In 2008, the year HSI was established, Ireland won one international medal. In 2023, Team Ireland, supported by HSI and Sport Ireland, has won ten underage medals, an 11th silver medal for the senior jumping team at the European Championships in September and a 12th silver medal at individual level for Michael Murphy in para dressage, again at the European Championships.
Members may recall from our presentation in June that HSI is a national governing body for equestrian sport, recognised internationally by the Fédération Equestre Internationale, the Olympic Federation of Ireland and Sport Ireland as the governing body for equestrian sport. As such, HSI operates high-performance programmes to support Olympic-level athletes and athlete participation internationally.
The results we have achieved this summer are fantastic as we prepare for the Olympic Games in Paris next year. They are also an important economic shop window for the breeding and production of horses, especially young horses, in the Irish rural economy.
That shop window will also benefit from programmes operated by Horse Sport Ireland such as the World Breeding Championships for Young Horses, supported by Horse Sport Ireland with funds from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
Exports of horses in 2022, exceeded €400 million in value to the economy annually, with approximately €185 million in exports of sport horses, including performance and rare breeds. Excluding those involved in the thoroughbred racing sector, we estimate that the sport horse sector employs approximately 47,000 people, both directly and indirectly, and is worth in excess of €1 billion to the Irish economy annually. International successes by Irish riders, supported by HSI high-performance programmes and by breeding and production initiatives, are an important revenue and avenue for breeders and producers to source markets for their horses.
Moving on to governance, in June, we informed the committee members of our consultation process on proposed governance changes to the selection methodology for equine industry directors to the board of HSI. We opened a public consultation and submissions from various stakeholders were received by the time the process closed in August. Those submissions have been published on our website and are being actively considered by the board at present. As part of that exercise, Horse Sport Ireland has engaged with and met a number of the stakeholders which provided submissions to that process. We are awaiting formal responses from those we have met, with a view to further possible suggestions and further input on the Government's reform. This input includes a commitment from the organisation to re-establish high-performance advisory groups, which we did early this summer in eventing and dressage and also in jumping and para equestrian, and we are awaiting nominees from Showjumping Ireland and Para Equestrian Ireland on that front.
There is also a very clear need in the organisation to establish the previous advisory council that existed in breeding and production, recreation and leisure, education and coaching, and high-performance. Once the selection process for the independent directors is clarified, we will be moving to reconstitute those committees in a new format.
Our consultation paper, which can be downloaded from the HSI website, clearly states the aspiration to move away from an elections and constituency model of board membership towards a skills-based board, which is very much in line with a more modern approach to corporate governance. The consultation document proposed an open call to all equestrians to apply to become directors of HSI. Once a prospective candidate is a member of one of our affiliated organisations, or a member of an active stakeholder group within the equestrian industry, he or she can either apply directly for consideration as a director or be nominated by his or her affiliated organisation. There is a misconception that non-equine industry candidates will be selected to join the board, but the document clearly states that this is neither the intention nor the desire at this time.
It is further proposed that an external selection panel will select and recommend the most suitable candidates to join the board of HSI on the basis of the appointment of a skills-based board. The selection panel will also ensure gender balance and the open call gives every equestrian the opportunity to apply for consideration as a director. It broadens the pool of skilled people available and willing to join the board of directors of a complex organisation such as HSI. Members will be very much aware that conflicts of interest, especially where unaddressed, have led in the past to many issues within the various iterations of the board of HSI over the past 15 years. This new approach opens up the process so that all equestrians can be considered by the independent panel, thereby providing a wider pool of possible applicants available to join the board and also reducing possible conflicts.
Since June, Horse Sport Ireland has held its AGM and lodged its accounts with the Companies Registration Office. Members may be aware from recent equestrian media coverage of the fragile nature of those accounts. The financial statements outline the risks relating to the funding model for the organisation and its dependency on grants from Sport Ireland and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The business is confident of its ability to continue as a going concern, although the balance sheet is fragile due to losses incurred in recent years and the funding model, by which we mean the timing of grant payments we receive from State funders. The management team, board members and I have embarked upon a comprehensive assessment of strategies to strengthen the financial position of the organisation to ensure its long-term sustainability as a going concern. This plan is already showing an impact in 2023 and we will strengthen the position further in 2024.
With respect to governance within the Horse Sport Ireland affiliates, HSI, with Sport Ireland funding in 2021, commissioned a two-year workshop programme specifically aimed at assisting HSI’s 20-plus sport and recreation affiliates to become compliant with the Sport Ireland governance code. Senan Turnbull, a governance expert in the Carmichael Centre, undertook a series of governance workshops to which all of the affiliates were invited to send two participants each over the past two years. The workshops are practical in nature and they charted the work each organisation needed to undertake so as to achieve compliance. While many of the affiliates participating in the workshops have seized the opportunity presented to them to enhance their overall governance, regrettably, some organisations have not fully attended the workshop series and their actual progress towards compliance with the code is not fully clear at this time. To this end, however, Horse Sport Ireland has sought assurances from each of the Covid-19 grant recipients, of which there are several, to provide statements of assurance of their own compliance and from the boards on the expenditure and governance upon which they have embarked, including independent assurances from each of their external auditors.
I will address passporting issues because I am conscious that some Senators and Deputies may have received some queries regarding this. We recognise that there are delays in the issuance of horse studbook passports. There are two primary reasons for the delay. First, we initiated a migration project last year, migrating from an older DNA parentage testing system known as microsatellites, MS, to single nucleotide polymorphism, SNP, known as "snips". SNP DNA testing has been used - as many will know - within the Irish cattle industry since 2009 and horses are the last remaining species on the microsatellite technology. This migration began last year, with the retesting of 10,000 older samples from notable and active breeding mares and stallions to build a new reference library for future DNA testing. However, where a stallion or mare has not been captured in the initial 10,000 batch done in 2022, breeders have experienced delays where the parents of foals need to be tested on the SNP platform prior to the foal being tested on the SNP platform again and those parents verified. This has not been ideal and has been a source of delays in issuing passports which normally take approximately 40 working days to complete and the DNA testing element taking 20 of those days, in and of itself. This issue is affecting all equine studbooks, not just Horse Sport Ireland. It affects all of the studbooks that are involved in the transitioning from MS to SNP.
Second, in the context of passport delays, we have also seen significant staff turnover within our passporting team in particular. Of 17 staff members employed in the passporting unit, in the buoyant employment market this year, eight have opted to leave the organisation since January and two others are on extended leave. This creates lags in recruiting replacement staff and training and upskilling delays. Historically, HSI has recruited a considerable number of graduate entry staff, a matter I touched on in our discussions in June. As with most graduates, many move on within two or three years from their first job post graduation. In exit interviews, staff have cited higher salaries on offer elsewhere as the main driver in their decision to leave the organisation.
Separately, and also in the context of passporting, we are undertaking a tender process to procure a provider to develop a digital e-passport system, which will ultimately speed up the efficiency of our administration of paper passports and provide a new digital passport offering to breeders. As I said, this system is under tender, with a provider due to be selected before Christmas and the system to be operational during the summer of 2024.
On financial supports, Horse Sport Ireland has played a significant role, on behalf of Sport Ireland in particular, in the administration of public funds towards equestrianism. The beneficiaries of almost €3 million in funding since 2020 have been HSI affiliates and stakeholder groups, the largest recipients being Eventing Ireland, Show Jumping Ireland, Dressage Ireland, and the Association of Riding Establishments, known as AIRE.
From earlier amounts provided to the committee, HSI has completed an evaluation of the final round of Covid-19 supports. These amounts were allocated in October 2023. In total, Horse Sport Ireland has administered €2.8 million in Covid funding and participation grants funded by Sport Ireland and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media from 2020 to date into the affiliate family. In total, there were five rounds or schemes of Covid supports offered by Sport Ireland and administered by HSI to the industry. In the early months of Covid, the focus of grant aid to sporting and community and voluntary organisations was on efforts to shore up losses in revenue and membership so as to prevent organisations from either winding up or having mass redundancies. Members will remember that from early 2020. HSI allocations to affiliates followed a similar pattern in the first round of that Covid funding. As the rounds evolved, the supports to sporting bodies receiving grants from HSI changed to support staff training, volunteer training, restart grants to encourage new club activity, encouragement of return to sport and physical activity within those organisations.
Separately, participation grants are an annual small grant scheme for new projects or initiatives supported by HSI. Affiliates apply each year and can receive amounts up to €10,000 per affiliate to encourage new initiatives and projects that encourage more participation in equestrian sport. Grants have varied from initiatives such as supporting Eventing Ireland to undertake a strategic plan; funding coaches in Dressage Ireland for a series of “Try Dressage” days around the country; expanding membership in pony clubs in economically and socially disadvantaged areas with the Irish Pony Club; and providing education and training for volunteers in RDA Ireland, which provides opportunities for individuals with physical or intellectual disabilities to ride horses or carriage drive. Over €300,000 has been allocated since 2020 in participation grants to affiliates.
The final dimension of Horse Sport Ireland supports included direct financial sponsorship to affiliates to promote equestrianism. In 2021, for example, Horse Sport Ireland provided €55,000 to Showjumping Ireland in direct sponsorship for the premier showjumping series. As members can see in the table attached to our opening statement, in the past three years alone, a substantial amount of taxpayers’ money has been invested by Horse Sport Ireland, on behalf of the taxpayer, with the support primarily of Sport Ireland, into encouraging and maintaining participation in equestrian sports. These figures do not take account of the additional €950,000 that has been invested by Horse Sport Ireland this year alone, with funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, in breeding and production classes in showing, jumping, eventing and dressage events around the country. Of this amount, more than €500,000 is allocated to over 60 rural shows the length and breadth of the country, along with €420,000 in a suite of studbook and development series events in jumping, eventing, dressage and combined training for horses and ponies. Members will be interested to know that equestrian venues do not receive a direct benefit from these events but they do receive a substantial indirect benefit as most venues that host major events, such as a round of the studbook series, could receive between €5,000 and €11,000 in entry fees from competitors, depending on the number of competitors participating in the event.
On behalf of Horse Sport Ireland, we hope this provides some clarity for members on the funds provided to affiliates in recent years, while also giving an update on some of the successes we have achieved and some of the challenges we are dealing with. We welcome this opportunity for engagement with the committee and thank members for their time.
