Helmet standards concern

Madam,

I AM very concerned regarding the recent recommendations on riding helmets which are being issued by the various riding organisations to their members.

Riding organisations should consider carefully before recommending a helmet which relies on the VG1 specification.

VG1 does not provide the level of protection to riders that is provided by the PAS015 or Snell specification.

Riding organisations should also recognise that there is presently a conflict of interest between commercial interests and safety levels in riding helmets.

The VG1 specification was developed for manufactures whose helmet could not pass the PAS015 specification without significant expenditure, and used in order to get their product to the market when EN 1384 was withdrawn in November 2015.

Some manufactures will try to persuade people that leisure riders need less head protection than professional riders when in fact they can need more protection.

Professional riders (after 80 falls or so) have learned how to fall and to protect themselves to some extent when falling.

Leisure and particularly young riders and those with less experience can need greater protection, (in fact the best possible protection), they are the ones most liable to come off backwards and crack their heads on a hard surface or in fact in a nice soft sand arena with fatal results.

It should be noted that not all helmets offer lateral or crush protection as far as I am aware only PAS015 and Snell to 1,000n do so.

Yours etc,

Peter Downes

Russellstown Stud

Mullingar

Supporting traditionally-bred horses

Madam,

YOUR article on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine Report on the Irish Horse Industry in your last issue records the report as recommending that “the future of the Irish Sport Horse industry should be supported with a development programme”. This is not what the report actually recommends.

Recommendation 37 of the report states “that the future of the traditional breed of the Irish Sport Horse be supported with a development programme.” The report further states “Irish breeders may have moved too far away from the Thoroughbred-Draught cross... The ‘traditional’ Irish horse needs to be retained.” This follows a similar recommendation in the 2015 strategic Plan Reaching New Heights.

The Traditional Irish Horse Association (TIHA) welcomes the Committee’s recommendation and its recognition of our Traditional Irish Horse (TIH) as a breed. This is the breed that made Ireland the envy of the Sport Horse world throughout the 20th century.

We have developed programmes for the conservation and development of the Traditional Irish Horse (see TIHA website and Facebook page), which comprises 40 percent of the Irish Sport Horse studbook. These programmes, fully aligned with the 2015 Strategic Plan and the Oireachtas Joint Committee Report recommendation, have been produced at no cost to HSI and have been approved by HSI’s Traditional Irish Horse Committee. The total cost of implementing these programmes in 2016 is less than two percent of HSI’s total annual budget.