Question: A relatively short AGM, compared to say in 2015 when there was a bombshell about the plan to drop stallion inspections the following year. But tonight we’re finished at 9pm?

Answer: Maybe I’ve realised what we need to do! Essentially our agenda is very simple. It’s a five-point agenda, the standard agenda for the past 25 years but the one bit I wanted to do was to bring people up to speed in terms of what’s happening during the course of the year. That’s actually in the Horse Board rule book; that at the AGM, the chair should let people know what’s been going on. That’s why, for example, I wanted to tell the people about how the online shareholder renewal system was working.

Q: You mentioned that the new system was a success; that online renewals increased to 48% this year from 11% the previous year?

A: If we could target 60% for 2020… We’ve done it once and last year we were slow enough getting out of the blocks because it took time, due to GDPR and such things. We liaised with HSI [Horse Sport Ireland] and when their Breeders Magazine was going out, we piggybacked on that and got the renewal forms in the Spring/Summer issue. The disappointing part of that was the number of them [renewal forms] that came back incomplete. In some cases people didn’t sign their name, just sent back a cheque with nothing on it.

I actually think the promo last year with the RDS was a clever little thing as it definitely drove the take up of the online renewal option. In all of the cases, the individuals who won the [Dublin Horse Show family] tickets, they actually took time out to write afterwards and say ‘That was wonderful, we really enjoyed that’.

Q: Membership fee revenue has dropped [from €119,775 (2017) to €109,075 (2018)], is there any particular reason for that?

A: I’d say it’s a sign of the times. There’s something of a contraction there, the number of foals being registered with HSI are reasonably stable but I’d say that maybe not as many breeders are involved. Some people are breeding two and three, possibly four foals but a lot of the hobby breeders breeding one foal... a lot of those I’d say have given up. And there is a migration towards Leisure Horse Ireland [for registrations].

Q: The Irish Sport Horse studbook – no decision has been made yet on who will run it. A letter was sent by Horse Sport Ireland to the Department of Agriculture in October and that’s where it stands now?

A: We heard there tonight from Ronan [Murphy, HSI CEO]. It’s exactly as he said, it’s with the Department [of Agriculture] now.

Q: Is the Irish Horse Board the front runner for the studbook license?

A: The Horse Board is aware of the recommendation in the Indecon Report, [that HSI divest itself of running the ISH studbook]. There were 27 references in Indecon that talks about the unusual relationship between the Horse Board Co-op and HSI. Since June 2017, when the report came out, the Horse Board is aware of that and the Horse Board is saying ‘Lets keep on top of this’, so we’ve been examining this, asking for information and clarification. Like, last year you mentioned in your [AGM] report about the Horse Board tooling up...

Q: Are you still ‘tooled up’ and ready to put in a bid?

A: Anything that we could do to date, we have it in-situ. For example, all the things I talked about tonight, in terms of cleaning up the database, making things more efficient, being fully tax compliant, we’ve done. One thing for certain is one of the questions that any Department will want to know is ‘Are you tax compliant?’ Anyone that’s in the business of running a studbook has to have all of this in place.

The way the process works... when you are awarded a studbook licence, you have to have your legal affairs in order.

One of the questions you would be asked, if the Horse Board was being considered, is ‘Have you money?’, ‘Have you a tax clearance certificate?’ because if you didn’t, it’s goodbye.

Q: But you have that in place?

A: We’ve been in the trenches, we’re going through all of that process and what I did tonight at the AGM was part of that process, as per the rules of the studbook. I briefed everybody in terms of some of the operational issues that were going on; the database, revenue and so on.

If, for example, and this is just pure speculation, but let’s just say that if some other entity… it could be Wetherbys, the Irish Cattle Breeders Federation, it could be Ryanair for all that matter, it could be a management buyout, it could be anyone… but if somebody else was successful in procuring the studbook licence, other than either the Co-op or Horse Sport Ireland, then the BPAC [HSI’s Breeding and Production Advisory Council] cannot be populated by Horse Board members.

Unless this other entity says: “We see you have some merit, we’ll put you in there,” but that’s not going to happen because they’re in the business for commercial purposes.