Turf Club plans legal challenge to HRI Amendment Bill

Irish racing's regulatory body the Turf Club plans to legally challenge sections of the new Horse Racing Ireland Amendment Bill if it gets passed into law as it currently stands.

The bill is due to be put before the Dail in June and is currently at the Attorney General’s office for drafting after heads of the bill to alter the administrative structure of racing in Ireland were approved by cabinet last month.

However long-term lurking discontent at the Turf Club over proposed changes to its funding, and what it sees as a potential impact on its regulatory independence, has broken to the surface and threatens to put a spanner in the works of Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney’s proposed new legislation.

Already strained relations between the Turf Club and Horse Racing Ireland – the body which administers the sport in this country – look set to worsen further after Turf Club confirmation it has informed the Department of Agriculture that if the legislation goes ahead in its current form, sections relating to point-to-point racing will be legally challenged.

It has also informed the Department it is highly likely that sections in relation to independent regulation of the sport will also be challenged and that its senior counsel advice is that if the bill goes ahead in its current form there could be a constitutional challenge to a number of sections. No challenge is possible until legislation has passed through the Oireachtas.

Independent regulation

The Turf Club’s chief executive

Denis Egan

has said Turf Club concerns have regularly been communicated to Department officials about the paramount importance of independent regulation in any new legislation and the new bill’s failure to enshrine the importance of independent regulation in a number of areas.

“We have been treated with total contempt by the Department in this and we feel we are not getting a fair crack of the whip – they are just not listening to us,” Egan said.

“We feel the independence of our integrity function is being threatened. They say it is not. But we have had a regulatory function for 225 years and we know what will compromise what we do. With all respect to the department, their expertise is not in the regulation of horse racing. Yet they tell us this will be a better structure. We don’t accept that,” he added.

Minister Coveney’s long- standing aim since the Government commissioned Indecon report in 2012 is to streamline racing’s administration. The Turf Club says it supports such cost-reductions but maintains savings can be made without a change in the administrative structure of racing.

“We cannot understand how the department are hell-bent on saying it is more efficient to run certain functions in HRI as opposed to the Turf Club when Indecon recommended a value for money audit at HRI which hasn’t been carried out. They’re talking about transferring certain functions to HRI when no one knows whether HRI is efficient or not,” Egan said.

Revenue streams

The Turf Club has also been at loggerheads with HRI and the department over controversial proposed changes to registrations which it says threaten revenue streams vital to its independence.

“What is being proposed is that all fees should be processed through HRI: that’s crazy. If you apply for a licence, you apply to the Turf Club, you pay HRI, who give the money back to the Turf Club: that’s not efficient,” Egan declared.

“”It is also proposed our revenues will be taken into account when determining the budget we receive from HRI for integrity. What does ‘taken into account’ mean? Twenty per cent? Fifty? Our barrister’s phrase is that it is a ‘void for uncertainty.’

“At the moment we have a separate source of income which has been helpful on occasions when HRI has refused to pay what we’re supposed to get from them. If we are totally dependent on them, it would mean a complete loss of independence. We would in effect be totally dependent on handouts.

“Another concern is that we are supposedly going to have to consult with HRI before we can make rules, which is a further threat to our independence. Of course if some change is going to cost a million euro we would consult. But it makes no sense to have to consult over whip or interference rules,” he added.

Sticking point

The issue of point-to-points is also a major sticking point between racing’s ruling bodies.

“They effectively want people who participate in the sport to register with a State organisation (HRI) on the basis it is more efficient. We don’t accept that: point-to-points are an amateur sport and we can see no basis for the state to be involved.

“Government gives grants to other sports such as the GAA but don’t require the participants to register with a semi-state body,” Egan said.