Board shocked and disappointed at Tourism Ireland decision to stop promoting greyhound racing

The representative body for greyhound racing in Ireland has expressed its “shock and disappointment” at the news the sport is no longer being promoted by the country’s tourism bodies to either the national or international markets.

Tourism Ireland, which holds responsibility for marketing Ireland overseas, has confirmed that the suspension of the promotion of greyhound racing is now active.

It is believed, in fact, that no such promotion of the sport, which has endured a rocky number of months on the back of a highly adversarial RTÉ documentary on the subject of greyhound welfare, has been carried out for some time, while references to greyhound racing have been removed from the various Irish tourism websites.

“Greyhound racing is a national sport and is a legitimate and important industry which people are entitled to participate in and enjoy. The tourism market is an important demographic for the industry and supports both direct and indirect employment within and outside of the greyhound community,” a spokesperson for the Irish Greyhound Board said.

A Fáilte Ireland spokesman said that, following concerns raised by Minister for Sport and Tourism Shane Ross following the RTÉ broadcast, both they and Tourism Ireland met with the greyhound board last week “to convey to them that the promotion of greyhound racing will not feature in tourism marketing campaigns domestically and overseas”.

Greyhound racing was rocked to its foundations by the RTÉ Investigates broadcast into the manner in which greyhounds are treated, which was first broadcast in late June.

The programme, entitled Greyhounds Running For Their Lives, showed that up to 6,000 greyhounds are being killed each year as they are not fast enough. It also revealed that 10 times more puppies are being bred than the industry needs (at a rate of 16,000 animals per year), with the dogs deemed surplus to requirements being culled as a result.

Those revelations were contained in a business analysis prepared for the Irish Greyhound Board in 2017 at a cost of €115,000, which was never published.

The board at present receives €16.8m in State funding each year from the Department of Agriculture.

Minister Ross was harshly critical of the “morality” of the greyhound industry since the broadcast of the RTÉ Investigates programme, and told Paul Kelly, the chief executive of Failte Ireland, that further promotion of the sport would likely negatively impact Ireland’s reputation as a tourism destination.

The Irish Greyhound Board has sought to repair the damage done to the sport’s reputation in recent times by condemning the actions of those depicted in the documentary, and by launching last month a €1m fund dedicated to the “care and welfare” of racing greyhounds.

The Board’s spokesman said it will soon make a “detailed submission” to both tourism bodies on “the area of care and welfare of the greyhound”.

The crisis saw greyhound racing lose three key sponsors - Barry’s Tea, FBD Insurance, and Connolly’s Red Mills - in recent weeks.