Committee hears Ireland’s 25 racecourses have no live CCTV

The chief executive of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board, Darragh O’Loughlin, said that just two courses in Ireland currently have CCTV installed. File picture: Denis Minihane

There are no live CCTV systems in place at any of Ireland’s 25 racecourses, more than four years after the drugging of a horse at a race meeting led to an outcry calling for increased scrutiny of stable yards.

The admission was made by the chief executive of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB), Darragh O’Loughlin, at Thursday morning’s session of the Public Accounts Committee.

Mr O’Loughlin said that just two courses in Ireland currently have CCTV installed, and that the IHRB “won’t be going live until it’s installed on all of them”.

Under questioning on the topic from Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster, Mr O’Loughlin said that CCTV “may have been talked about for five years but the process only began after the procurement process last March”. He denied there was any “reluctance” on the body’s part regarding the introduction of such security systems.

“Our absolute priority at IHRB has been to ensure the integrity of Irish horseracing. We’re progressing this project as quickly as it can be done,” he said.

Ms Munster stated that “it’s just one excuse after another” in terms of the CCTV project. “Every single time we asked the date was put back. It’s a question of either competency or the situation being purposefully delayed,” she said.

Security at racetracks and CCTV, in particular, has been a thorn in the side of the sport’s governing body Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) for a number of years, particularly after the horse Viking Hoard was injected with a sedative at 100 times the legal amount during a race meeting at Tramore in 2018.

Some €60,000 was allocated by HRI for the provision of CCTV at racecourses in 2018 but the money was never used, and was instead re-allocated by the IHRB for other purposes. The current tender for the provision of camera systems is valued at €500,000.

Tipperary land swap

Separately, the CEO of HRI Suzanne Eade told the committee that a deal, which saw the body lose €105,000 on a land swap at Tipperary racecourse in just two years, was a “great acquisition”.

The deal, one of two raised by the Comptroller and Auditor General as noteworthy in the context of HRI’s 2020 financial statements, saw HRI purchase 12 acres of land beside the course in 2019 at €25,000 per acre, before swapping seven acres of that plot with a neighbouring landowner at a value of just €10,000 last year – a 60% loss.

Committee chair Brian Stanley, in describing the affair as a “financial calamity”, asked how such a result had transpired given agricultural land prices increased “dramatically” over the same timeframe. He asked if Ms Eade would agree that the deal represented “an awful outcome”.

The horse Viking Hoard which was injected with a sedative at 100 times the legal amount during a race meeting at Tramore in 2018.

Ms Eade said that the land – which was acquired with a view to expanding the course into an all-weather track – is of “real strategic value”. 

“That land is important to us,” she said, admitting however that “where we got it wrong was we looked at it as a swap rather than a disposal and acquisition”.

“I still think it’s a great acquisition,” she said.

Meanwhile, the committee also heard the HRI has acknowledged a €6.4m loss on its initial €23m investment into the overhaul of The Curragh racecourse in Kildare – some 28% of the total amount put into the deal – in just three years.

HRI received some €67m in State funding via the Horse and Greyhound Fund in 2020. Its total funding allocation for 2022 meanwhile was €70.4m.