IT’s high time the playing pitch for equine breeders and producers was levelled as, euro for euro, the Irish Sport Horse industry has never been given fair dues by successive governments.

Contributing over €815 million to the Irish economy, the return from the public coffers – factoring in the collective tax take from our industry – has been pretty paltry over the last decade. It’s only right and fair to say that public funding has of course increased for our industry during that time to approximately €7 million p.a. give or take from all sources.

The fact is that the pitch is not and never has been level for horse breeders and producers who are locked out of many schemes readily available to other breeding and production sectors. We have called in these pages before for such available schemes to be open to equine farmers and breeders – it’s high time and well beyond for this to happen now, particularly as we chart these choppy post-Covid waters amid ever rising costs.

Our industry is still hampered by a lack of political champions truly fighting our corner – just take a look at the lacklustre political reaction to journalist and commentator’s Michael Slavin’s weeks-long quest to evoke a position stance from the various political hues colouring the landscape of Leinster House. Michael reports it was like pulling teeth, he got two thin responses out of seven after weeks.

While there is ‘goodwill’ out there towards our industry – and why would there not be for a flagship indigenous industry accounting for 14,000 full-time jobs and contributing almost €1 billion into the country’s economy each year – it’s real political action and clout we need to be ready to jump the coming challenges.