THE Horse Racing Ireland Bill is in a race against time to be signed into law before the Government is dissolved.

This week the Bill passed safely through the Dáil and only has one more hurdle to negotiate in the Seanad before being presented to the President for his signature. However, if the Taoiseach Enda Kenny gets to Aras an Uachtarain before the Bill then the legislation will have to wait until after the election.

A Dáil source told The Irish Field: “The Bill is provisionally booked into the Seanad for February 8th but hopefully that can be brought forward. The most likely date for the election is February 26th and the Taoiseach is likely to go to the President to formally ask him to dissolve the Dáil around the end of this month.”

The HRI Bill aims to create efficiencies and more transparency in the administration of Irish racing. Elements within the Turf Club have lobbied to amend or remove parts of the proposed legislation which they see as unnecessarily weakening the Turf Club’s influence and independence.

There are currently five Turf Club representatives on the HRI board but this will reduce to three when the Bill is passed. The Minister for Agriculture will also be able to nominate three board members instead of just appointing the chairman.

In the Dáil this week the Minister, Simon Coveney, allowed a number of amendments to the Bill, several of which should please the Turf Club.

One amendment allows that HRI will pay Turf Club expenses “in a reasonable way” and that this sum will not be deducted from the integrity budget. The extra funding is to ensure the Turf Club can maintain “appropriate independent functions and infrastructure”.

The Minister said: “The legislation will enshrine and protect the role of the Racing Regulatory Body (Turf Club) in providing integrity functions and racing but it does more than that. Anybody who understands the Turf Club knows that it does a lot more for racing. It holds receptions, it promotes, markets and enhances the reputation of racing and is extremely committed to that. Most of its members are volunteers.

“In other words the cost of maintaining its independence and infrastructure for delivering its services needs to be taken into account when those decisions are being made by HRI. That is not unreasonable so I will accept it.”

The Minister also agreed to take the Rules of Racing out of the legislation, accepting that this would reduce the likelihood of legal challenges to stewards’ decisions.

“The arguments here are whether we should put the rules of horse racing in legislation or whether we leave them out and let the regulatory body apply the rules as it sees fit, applying natural justice and so on. There are real dangers with defining rules of racing in law because it then becomes an interpretation of the Bill as opposed to allowing a regulatory body to design and defend the rules of horse racing, as they are determined.

“Having listened to the arguments and having spoken to various people and got advice on it, my inclination is to accept the amendment ... and simply remove section 13 from the Bill.”

An attempt to get a guaranteed spot on HRI’s media rights committee for the racehorse owners’ representative on the HRI board was knocked back by the Minister.

He said: “I am not in favour of giving any particular representative organisation rights where many other representative organisations claim an equal interest. The current structure and system between the media rights group and the board of HRI is a reasonably good one and we are looking at continuing that and protecting it in legislation.”

A Turf Club spokesman said: “The Turf Club and INHS Committee had a number of concerns with the legislation and we are pleased that the Minister has addressed most of these issues.”