MORE than €6.5m of exchequer funding has been allocated by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for the breeding and production side of the sport horse industry for 2026, up from €5.2m in 2025.

The increase does not, however, reflect a change in the amounts allocated to Horse Sport Ireland and The Irish Horse Board for delivering breeding and marketing initiatives. These remain static with the National Equine Breeding Services delivered by Horse Sport Ireland being allocated €4.4m (€1.5m operational ex VAT, plus €2.9m in breeding initiatives) and the National Equine Marketing Services delivered by the Irish Horse Board being allocated, as in 2025, €800,000 excluding VAT.

An additional €854,000 in the overall amount has been made available in Budget 2026 under the Equine Infrastructure grant scheme (Equine Technical Support).

“This funding will be made available through a competitive application process administered by the Department to support the areas of fostering, breeding, marketing, educational and disease prevention research within the equine/sport horse sector,” a DAFM spokesperson said.

It is expected that this scheme will be launched by Minister Heydon shortly.

HSI is also funded by Sport Ireland who will be in receipt of an extra €10.8m in 2026. This will in turn increase the Core funding for national governing bodies of sport and local sports partnerships by €2m. High Performance funding has also been increased by €1.5m overall in Budget 2026 ahead of LA 2028.

A spokesperson for Sport Ireland said: “The core and high-performance allocations for individual national governing bodies for sport will be determined by Sport Ireland in Q1 2026.”

In 2025, Horse Sport Ireland was allocated €1.105m in Core funding, appearing in fourth place on the list of funding for NGBs, behind Special Olympics Ireland (€1.65m), Athletics Ireland (€1.27m) and Swim Ireland (€1.21m). It was allocated €900,000 in High Performance funding.

On the thoroughbred side, Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) received no extra funding from the Department of Agriculture for 2026. The racing authority will again receive €79.3 million in Government aid next year. This is the first time it has been frozen since the Covid year of 2020. With inflation running at around 2.7%, the allocations to HRI, HSI and the IHB are effectively a decrease in real terms.

Asked by The Irish Field to explain why funding for racing had been frozen and if this was a pattern likely to be repeated for the remaining four years of the current Government’s tenure, Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon said: “This Budget is one that has been very constrained. Every state department is the same because we’re not having the kind of increased spending that there has been in previous years, so that is reflected in our semi-state allocations.”