MEATH-based Ability Equine Assisted Therapy (AEAT) is facing imminent closure due to crippling financial issues. The registered charity provides critical equine assisted therapy to children and adults with physical, intellectual and sensory disabilities. AEAT has been in operation at its Castletown base since 2014 and currently works with around 50 families and services, including nursing homes, hospitals and rehabilitation centres.

The centre’s plight was brought up by Independent TD Gillian Toole (Meath East) recently, when she was engaging with a second stage Dáil debate on the Disability (Amendment) Bill 2026.

“There is an excellent service, Ability Equine Assisted Therapy, in north Meath. It is at risk of being wound up. It is a charity and everything is above board, but those involved are so busy trying to meet the needs of families in north Meath that have children who may have regulation or behavioural issues or occupational therapy issues. There are good people doing good work, and we need to be creative with the framework to support them,” the deputy said.

Imminent threat

Speaking to The Irish Field this week, centre director and therapeutic riding coach Victoria Lacey explained the varied services the centre provides and predicted that closure could come as early as November, if a financial injection was not found.

“We provide equine assisted therapy to children and adults who have additional needs, people who have mild to profound disabilities and people who have mental health challenges. We do therapeutic horse riding and stable management, which is a really broad term for being on the ground with the horses.

“We have a lot of adults in residential care who come and, even if they just come and hug a horse, that changes the course of their day. A lot of these people are non-verbal or are teenagers with very high anxiety levels and they get huge benefits from being on the ground with horses. We do children’s camps aimed at those with disabilities, which gives the parents a little bit of respite as well.

“We also do something called Eagala, which is equine assisted psychotherapy, targeting people with mental health conditions, people in rehab for addiction etc, so it’s a mixed bag and it’s a lot of work.

“We have three staff and nine horses, we lease our space and unfortunately we don’t have an indoor, which causes a lot of cancellations and this severely impacts our income. We have also seen a drop off in fundraising income and we had two very sick horses. We prioritised their care because that is paramount, as well as our insurance, but we got behind on our accounting and, as a result, we are facing late filing fees in the thousands.

“We have a retired accountant on board now, but that doesn’t make the fees go away unfortunately and he’s basically been told sort it out now or close. We’ve always managed to pull something out of the bag, but at the moment we really are in trouble. It’s very much a computer says no thing, it doesn’t matter how important it is to people, and that’s the harsh reality of it. We know we have legal obligations to adhere to, but at the same time it can be very hard. For some people that come to us, it is literally the only activity that they do, there’s nothing else that they can do.”

Lacey said the short-term plan was an idonate appeal to get the centre out of its current crisis. She said they were also very interested in any avenues to get funding for an indoor, so they could run regardless of weather.

“If I had the magic wand, I would want our own premises, where we could have those facilities and continue to do what we do without fear. We will take any help we can get at this point, if anyone had horses suitable for the job we could take more clients, if we had sponsors for feed or rugs etc that would help, we would even consider relocating.”

Most of the AEAT services are privately funded by client’s families or residential care providers, while some hospital work is funded by the HSC. Anyone interested in helping can donate via www.idonate.ie/fundraiser/abilityequineassistedtherapy1 or email info@aeat.ie