FRUSTRATION has been vented by some breeders and owners this week over delays in equine passport-issuing by Horse Sport Ireland of over six months in some cases.

One northern breeder told The Irish Field they have been waiting since last July for a horse passport while another has been waiting over six months for a foal passport.

It emerged that significant unavoidable delays were encountered in tier-2 labs such as those that process equine DNA for passports due to priority being given to Covid-19 testing. In addition, work was ongoing on a new DAFM-approved format for equine passports and re-printing of passports started again on Monday.

A backlog of 1,200 passports is now being tackled actively and many passports will be in the post in the next two weeks or before.

HSI statement

In a statement on the issue yesterday (Friday), Horse Sport Ireland stated: “Horse Sport Ireland acknowledge that breeders and owners are experiencing a delay in current turnaround times particularly where parentage verification is required.

“Equine parentage verification has been adversely affected by the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The laboratories used by HSI for such verification are considered a tier-2 laboratory. During the pandemic, every available laboratory resource such as plastics, test kits, reagents, even engineering time and maintenance, have been prioritised to laboratories dealing with the Covid-19 response. This alone has caused much longer than usual delays to DNA turnaround times which are currently between 6-10 weeks, and have been longer at periods during the pandemic.

“HSI’s DNA testing partners are using every available laboratory to ensure that testing is completed as quickly as possible, including sending samples to laboratories overseas where necessary.”

New format

The HSI statement continued: “Furthermore, recent EU legislative change with the commencement of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/ 963 has also had a short adverse delay in passport issuance. To comply with amendments to EU Regulations regarding equine passports, a number of significant changes needed to be adopted.

“HSI has been engaged and working collaboratively with officials in the Department of Agriculture to ensure that the amendments are implemented in accordance with the regulation across all the studbooks for which HSI have responsibility. Unfortunately, to comply with the regulation, HSI have experienced a short two-week delay from January 28th up to February 14th.

“During that time, HSI legally could not print a passport or issue on the old format passport, and work to complete the change over to the new format wasn’t complete.

“With assistance from DAFM officials, a new passport format was confirmed on Monday, February 14th. Printing of passports has resumed earlier this week.

“As printing of passports has resumed, we are dealing with a backlog of approximately 1,200. Once passports are printed, they go through an internal quality control process within HSI. As printing only resumed in the later part of this week, some breeders and owners can expect to start receiving passports next week, however, it will take one to two weeks before many of the affected passports are received by breeders.”