At the heart of the issue is an explosive letter signed by six members of the 20-strong Council and sent to Minister for State at the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, Michael Ring, and Professor Pat Wall, chairman of Horse Sport Ireland.

Meanwhile, Minister for Agriculture, Marine and Food Simon Coveney informed The Irish Field on Wednesday that he had not received any such letter himself.

The letter outlines a raft of grievances and calls for the suspension of all public funding to the Society, on foot of alleged financial irregularities.

The six people who signed the letter also detailed other issues, ranging from licensing, insurance and indemnity to property rights and matters pertaining to the Society’s Articles of Memorandum which are currently under review.

CPBS president Andy O’Donoghue only learned of the letter’s existence when a copy of it arrived on his doorstep out of the blue. He has since forwarded a copy of it to the other Council members and the letter and its contents are now set to be raised at April’s meeting of the Council.

Andy O’Donoghue told The Irish Field yesterday: “Basically these six Council members are calling for the suspension of all public funding to their own Society until further notice. They sent this letter off their own bat without any consultation with the rest of the Council.

“Our Society doesn’t get any funding from HSI. Yet, if what these six members want in this letter ever comes about, I can tell you that our pony passports will cost triple the price that they currently do, up from €50 to about €150.

“It is the ordinary members that will suffer, not the directors. None of us Council members, myself included as president, make a penny from being involved in the Society. In fact, it has cost me about €10,000 to do this job, truth be told,’’ added O’Donoghue.

Honorary Secretary of the CPBS, John Riordan, said that the signatories must substantiate their allegations openly to their fellow Council members around a table.

“There has been no misappropriation of funds in our Society. Granted, mistakes were made in the past with historical court cases. The directors of the Society are a voluntary group, completely unpaid, doing the best they can in a difficult economic climate.

“There is a group of people who are looking for problems, not for solutions. We are all in this together, working for the good of our Society. These men are heading down a dangerous road with their allegations. Most of the issues in their letter relates to internal Society issues that can be thrashed out around a table.

“This is both very sad and very frustrating, given the fact that the Connemara pony is the most successful sector of the sport horse industry in Ireland,’’ Riordan pointed out.