Isabel Hurley

HUMAN and equine lives are being put at enormous risk as public motorway routes are being recklessly used for weekly sulky road races, involving huge underground gambling.

Cash prizes of €10,000 to the winners for some of these illegal road races is believed to be fuelling the dangerous scourge of sulky road racing on public roads nationwide, including the M4 motorway around Mullingar, Co Westmeath.

This issue, highlighted previously in this newspaper, featured in an RTÉ Prime Time broadcast on Thursday evening along with a studio debate between Martin Collins of Pavee Point and Andrew Kelly, CEO of the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ISPCA).

Collins spoke of the long tradition between travellers and horses, adding that sulky racing on the roads is dangerous and animal welfare is at risk from the practice. He advocated for safe, off-road racing facilities to be constructed, similar to those available in France and Kentucky.

Kelly stressed the welfare of the horses and ponies and called for a ban on sulky road racing, backed up by garda enforcement.

Meanwhile, Barbara Bent, chairperson of the ISPCA, told The Irish Field yesterday: “Motorway sulky racing on the M4 is going on every Sunday around Mullingar despite the huge danger posed to other road users and the unfortunate horses involved. The road safety issue is not even being tackled on the motorways. There is huge gambling involved with prizes of €10,000 to the winners of these races.

“A number of local authorities nationwide have by-laws banning sulky racing on all their public roads but enforcement is the issue. The legislation is simply not being enforced. Young trotting ponies, some of them only foals barely six months old, are being used for sulky road racing. We have rescued many of them with all sorts of injuries and welfare issues.

“We must get the sulkies off the public roads. The ISPCA is in favour of any scheme or project that will get the horses off the road and onto soft surfaces on a safe track. You can see sulky road racing going on almost every day of the week in some places and particularly in Waterford, Kilkenny and Tipperary.

“Last year in Waterford, a sulky trotting pony collided with a minibus. Another woman at a stop sign had her car crashed into from behind by a sulky that couldn’t stop. Some of the horses and ponies that come to us are suffering from all kinds of terrible injuries - emaciation, dreadful knee wounds, swollen joint problems; desperate facial injuries caused by bits pulling right through their mouths,” said Bent.

Kilkenny County Council had dealt with the disposal of 69 dead horses dumped along roadsides in its jurisdiction in the last five years. The ISPCA maintains that many of these horses died from horrific injuries as a result of sulky road racing.

Kilkenny’s figures have dwindled in recent years - there were 19 dead horses found in 2012, 11 in 2014 and just two so far this year - but the ISPCA believes that the problem is actually still as strong as ever. “Horses are still dying as a result of sulky road racing, those people involved are just now dumping them in remote areas, off the roads,” said Bent.