Irish Horse Board.

Tuesday, 14 December 2004

Questions (224)

Denis Naughten

Question:

247 Mr. Naughten asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the funding provided by her Department to the Irish Horse Board in each year since 1989; the corresponding figures in EU funding provided to the board; the funding under each category to be provided in 2005; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [32993/04]

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Written answers

Minister for Agriculture and Food (Mary Coughlan)

The interim Irish Horse Board was set up in 1992 and the assets and liabilities of the Interim Horse Board were assumed by the Irish Horse Board in 1993. The following table provides details of the funding provided by my Department to the Irish Horse Board by way of grant aid for the promotion and development of the sport horse industry and for the implementation of equine schemes under the Operational Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development, OPARDF, 1994-1999 and the National Development Plan 2000-2006. My Department recouped 75% of the funding provided to the Irish Horse Board for OPARDF schemes from the EU. Moneys paid under the National Development Plan 2000-2006 are funded wholly by the Exchequer.

Year	DAF GRANT	OPARDF / NDP	Total funding from DAF
	A	B	C =(A+B)
	€	€	€
1992	95,230	0	95,230
1993	95,230	0	95,230
1994	95,230	0	95,230
1995	95,230	461,725	556,955
1996	142,845	524,042	666,887
1997	142,845	502,983	645,828
1998	190,460	419,709	610,169
1999	253,947	371,163	625,110
2000	323,783	123,451	447,234
2001	584,080	418,259	1,002,339
2002	600,000	686,218	1,286,218
2003	560,000	433,341	993,341
2004 (est.)	525,000	455,500	980,500
2005 (est.)	825,000	530,000	1,355,000

Since 1992 the Irish Horse Board, with the assistance of my Department, has completed a valuable programme of work focusing the industry on the need to breed quality horses and seeking to achieve the improvement of the Irish sport horse through performance testing and training regimes. The Irish Horse Board also assists in the marketing of sport horses in the international market place. A measure of the success achieved by the Irish Horse Board to date is that the Irish sport horse studbook has topped the rankings in the 2003-2004 World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses eventing rankings for the ninth successive year and the Irish sport horse studbook was placed overall sixth in the 2002-2003 World Breeding Federation Sport Horses show jumping rankings.