Sir, - I have been following your post-Christmas editions with keen interest and your interviews and reports on significant figures within the multi-faceted layers of the racing game are providing an excellent service to the industry.

The recent interviews with the present Minister, Simon Coveney, John O’Connor and Francis Hyland, the Moyglare Dinner report and, lastly, a letter on the ‘stay-at-home’ punter by a correspondent prompted me to respond.

As a keen racegoer and punter I am disturbed by the seeming acceptance that the racecourse industry here is in terminal decline and that an on-course bookmaker will soon be as scarce as an infertile stallion in Coolmore.

New thinking is badly needed and, as often mentioned recently, individual sector-interests need to put aside ‘selfish’ ambitions for the overall betterment of the local racing product. This responsibility lies with the board of HRI who are charged with the overall governance of this uniquely Irish sport and business.

As a practising chartered accountant specialising in the bloodstock industry I can see every day at first-hand the current winners and losers within the game. I am pleased to say that our breeders and traders are experiencing profitable times and enhancing the reputation of Ireland as horse traders par excellence. We have always been very adept at this aspect of the business which successfully targets export markets and international sources of funds.

Traders simply identify a range of opportunities and devote their full energy to exploiting these opportunities very successfully.

The indigenous racing industry incorporating racehorse training, racecourse attendance and on-course betting is, alas, another story. Many trainers are simply surviving - in large part thanks to extremely generous credit terms advanced by loyal product and service providers – and many racecourses seem happy to pocket the SIS dividend with little or no accountability to their paymasters whilst the death knell for on-course betting has been sounded for a long time.

Letters that congratulate ATR on superb pictures for the ‘stay-at-home’ punter do not strike me as the way forward and I have long believed that the proliferation of the Main Street betting emporia/casinos is nothing but bad news for Irish racing.

I believe a fundamental change in approach is needed to arrest certain declines and a combination of incentives and penalties should be introduced to ensure that the local racing product and all its attendant branches can lift themselves off the floor.

My proposals would include:

  • Introduce a 5%-10% off-course tax on stakes or winnings. Punters, the world over, are happy to suffer take-outs of 20%-30% in racing jurisdictions that we consider ‘successful’.
  • The 12.5% corporate tax rate on gambling earnings is surely one of the most ludicrously low tax rates on earnings of a questionable nature and a special annual levy should be introduced that could be justifiably ring-fenced for racing.
  • Continue tax-free, on-course betting for bookmakers and grant them advantages over their bricks-and-mortar competitors that will encourage your average punter (surrounded by wall-to-wall technological advantage) to “come racing”.

    • This requires a sea-change in approach to be adopted by both Ministers for Finance and Agriculture but I, for one, would not weep for the off-course bookmaking industry if they pocketed less cash that in many other countries in the world would be contributing to a healthy racing industry and its many attendant benefits. – Yours, etc.,

    DAVID SKELLY FCA,

    35A Kickham Street,

    Carrick-on-Suir,

    Co Tipperary.

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