FUELLING the stuff that horsepeople’s new year dreams are made of was the recent €10-€12 million sale of the Irish-bred Aga Khan winner MHS Going Global but, all dreams aside, the more routine sales returns from 2016 indicate that many Irish Sport Horse breeders and producers are not making money.

Anyone who applied Teagasc’s costs of production figures, outlined at their successful recent National Equine Conference in Kilkenny and reported in this newspaper, to many of the published sales returns over the last 12 month period can readily see that for themselves at a glance.