DOWN Royal chief executive Emma Meehan says the racecourse can properly plan for the future after changes to legislation have allowed funding to be restored to Northern Ireland’s two racecourses.

It was announced this week that the Horse Racing (Amendment) Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 has been passed. The Act primarily amends the Horse Racing (Northern Ireland) Order 1990 and allows for payments from the Horse Racing Fund to Down Royal and Downpatrick racecourses to be reinstated.

The Fund was discontinued in 2019 as a result of a change of management at Down Royal, when the Down Royal Corporation of Horse Breeders, a centuries-old body which effectively became the management for the racecourse, had their lease terminated by current landowners, the Dublin-based Merrion Property Group.

Because the new operator at Down Royal wasn’t specifically named on the legislation, the track has been ineligible for support from the Fund. In turn, payments to Downpatrick had also been suspended as the Northern Ireland Assembly took the view that it would be unfair to support one racecourse over the other.

“The change in legislation has been long awaited,” Meehan told The Irish Field. “It wasn’t easily edited or amended and obviously Covid came into play as well so that certainly delayed the process and going back further when we took over, there was no functioning executive at that point.

“It’s been a tumultuous ride for us financially. We had no initial access to the fund and a 66% decrease in turnover with Covid. Thankfully through our owner, Merrion Property Group, we did secure internal funding which allowed us to maintain and reinvest. A lot of that DAERA money goes towards supporting the prize fund at Down Royal.

“We pay a quarter of a million over to Horse Racing Ireland in prize money every year with a 100% strike rate in corporate sponsorship and I am committed to delivering that. That’s through sheer endeavour, we haven’t missed a beat, but that’s just not realistic long term for a racecourse having to do that when that benchmark was set on the foot of the DAERA monies to Down Royal at the time.

“We’ve worked very hard and the reality is, that money has to go back to pay off the internal group loans and set a bit of equilibrium as we look beyond to hopefully what will be fairly buoyant 2022 trading year and beyond that. We’ve worked very hard up to this point so it just takes a wee bit of weight off.”

Downpatrick manager Richard Lyttle said: “It has been a tough couple of years for us with the suspension of payments from the Fund and also having to race behind closed doors due to Covid restrictions.

“We are pleased that the payments from the fund will resume forthwith and we look forward to opening our doors to the public for the Randox Ulster National on March 20th.”

The change in legislation means that the Horse Racing Fund is now linked directly to the operator of both Down Royal and Downpatick so a similar instance, where a change of operation at either racecourse occurs, would not affect the fund.

The Horse Racing Fund is made up from a levy collected from licensed bookmakers in Northern Ireland, and provides financial support to horse racing at Northern Ireland’s two racecourses.