AS the clock ticks down to next week’s Budget, leading equine industry figures highlighted the need for a major injection of public funds into the Irish Sport Horse industry and Horse Sport Ireland.

It has now emerged that the contribution of the Irish Sport Horse industry to Ireland’s economy is even greater than previously estimated.

The 2015 Reaching New Heights Report estimated that the industry contributed some €700m to the Irish economy, more than double the €300m sheep sector.

However, latest figures from Horse Sport Ireland show that the industry actually contributes over €816m to the Irish economy.

Yet Horse Sport Ireland received less than €4m from the public coffers in 2016.

Horse Sport Ireland CEO Ronan Murphy told The Irish Field: “The Irish Sport Horse industry contributes over €816 million to the Irish economy each year and supports over 14,000 full time jobs across the breeding, sport and leisure sectors making a vitally important contribution to the economic, social and cultural fabric of rural Ireland. The sector has consistently delivered despite significant resource constraints.

“The Irish Government funding to Horse Sport Ireland for 2016 was €3.96 million. The recommendations set out in the Indecon Report provide a platform for the future development and growth of the Irish Sport Horse sector however, significant additional funding is required to realise this potential. The window of opportunity is now and we are working with all our stakeholders to progress the development of the sector at pace.”

Meanwhile the UCD Report on the Contribution of the Sport Horse Industry to the Irish Economy 2017 is being considered by the Department of Agriculture, Food and The Marine.

“The Report has already been made available to the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine, for their consideration in the run up to budget deliberations. It will be formally launched shortly and a full and detailed analysis will be provided for The Irish Field readers,” commented authors Alison Corbally and Prof. Alan Fahey of UCD.

It’s also expected that the report from economist Jim Power will be publicly released shortly.

NEGLECTED

Commenting on the Irish sport horse industry, top racehorse trainer and breeder Jim Bolger said: “It was very sad to see over the years all the mares being exported and we left the Dutch with a lot of our progeny. They’re top of the tree now so I felt maybe something could be done about that so I keep a couple of sport horse broodmares.

“It’s very neglected. (The Government) should be putting €20 million a year into that and they’d get a great return for it.”

Jim Bolger was one of the keynote speakers at Horse Sport Ireland’s packed marketing symposium in Athlone in March where his robust approach went down a storm among the attendees.

(See the full Jim Bolger interview on A6-7)

TAX TAKE

However, ahead of next week’s budget, it’s emerged that the State’s tax receipts for the first nine months of the year are below target, leaving less margin for the Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe to juggle the available fiscal space.

Minister Donohoe has an estimated €350m at his disposal in next week’s budget with politicians across all parties believing that the giveaway package has actually to be closer to €600m to have any real impact.

A range of tax rises for the old reliables of tobacco and alcohol as well as a new sugar tax are all being mooted by political pundits.

With a massive nationwide housing crisis on their hands, it’s very widely expected that addressing this and other major social ills will be at the very top of next week’s budget measures.

Both Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Minister Donohoe want to raise the threshold from €33,800 at which taxpayers currently enter the 40% income tax rate and there could be some marginal reductions to the Universal Social Charge (USC).

The Government has collected just over €35 billion in taxes so far this year - €212m less than expected amid expectations that the tax take from the self-employed sector may close the gap by the end of 2017.

Income tax came in at 1.4% or some €188m below target.

This time last year, the then Minister for Finance Michael Noonan had almost €500m more available than forecast compared to Minister Donohoe’s €200m shortfall.