ECONOMIST Jim Power, author of the Sport Horse Alliance report ’Untapped Potential: Unlocking the Economic Potential of the Irish Sport Horse Industry’, told Tuesday’s Joint Oireachtas Agriculture Committee that the sector needed €100 million in government funding over the next five years.

“We would need €100 million over the next five years in our industry but realise the competing demands. With Brexit as well, that will have a serious effect on the lower end of our market because the UK takes about 40% of our horses,” said Power who outlined that Horse Sport Ireland put in for €13.1 million in funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine but got just an extra €500,000, bringing funding to some €3 million.

“It’s completely inadequate. It is critical we have realistic multi-annual funding established. We have written to Minister Creed to establish a high level group to identify and secure high levels of funding streams for our sector,” said Power who spent his recent years researching all levels of this “very broad diverse sector.”

Stating that the Irish sport horse industry supports some 14,000 full-time jobs nationwide; with 46,000 people engaged in it and making an economic contribution of €816 million to the economy, the top economist identified the lack of support structures and a strategic plan as factors for the low funding to date but said that under revamped Horse Sport Ireland, this has now changed.

“Prize money is very weak, the tourism potential of the sector is not recognised or exploited, facilities are just not up to scratch, there has to be a focus on education and we need to create a career for young people in horse sport here. If not, the brain drain will continue,” said Power who pointed to the Dutch venue of Peelbergen as a good example of local authorities getting behind rurally-based businesses.

“It is the utopian vision of what the Irish sport horse industry could become,” Power told the Committee.

Advocating that the industry could, with the right structures in place, “at least double” the contribution to the economy and make a very strong rural economic and social contributor.

“Ireland has a very strong reputation for the horse; we need to mind this and need to nuture this and going the wrong way about this now. One half of the whole tradition of horses in Ireland would be wiped out and that would be a huge pity,” he added.

Warning that Ireland, geographically at a disadvantage from mainland Europe, was further “slipping back”, Power agreed with Committee members that the Rural Development Plan was a “definite fit’’ for the sport horse sector.

His last word was saved for unity and cohesion in the industry. “The united voice of Horse Racing and Greyhounds have worked together, whereas the sport horse sector never had a united approach or united voice. They are much more on board now. I hope the sport horse sector could go someway towards emulating what we have in the horse racing sector,” he said.