This article isn’t about breeding matters but rather more mundane administrative issues. The staff in Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) are very nice but their systems are woefully inadequate for 2021. Part of the remit of HRI is to encourage racehorse ownership but their outdated processes and bureaucracy are a major turn-off for new owners in syndicates/partnerships. They also haven’t adjusted for Covid and it is no longer practical to meet your dozen other fellow syndicate members in the pub and gather all their signatures (or however they imagine it happens).

HRI only provide non editable partnership forms that owners and syndicates are expected to print out, hand fill, sign or scan/ post to the next person (and there may be 10 or more people in a syndicate). This is not acceptable in 2021. I know some syndicate managers just sign on behalf of everyone.

Here are some improvements that could easily be made if HRI wanted to improve life just a little for owners:

1. Have editable pdf /typable word documents for all ownership forms on the HRI website. Better still have an online form in which details are entered

2. Accept digital signatures – it is 2021, we have been through a pandemic but their systems haven’t adapted

3. Allow an online check of available horse names (subject to final verification). Currently you have to ring up and speak to someone, yet there is no reason why this can’t be done online.

4. Sort out the sequencing of registering a new owner in a partnership. As I understand it, they can’t be registered until they are linked to a horse and that horse has to be named. Why? (apart from system inadequacy)

5. The charge for naming a horse can only be taken from one partners account- yet everything else is split in proportion. I’d love to know the justification for that…

6. Colours can’t be registered for a partnership but they can for a syndicate. Some people don’t care about whose colours a horse runs in but others do and having a neutral option that doesn’t favour one partner would be a good idea.

There are HRI charges to owners for everything from registering a partnership/registering colours, renewal, authority to act, registering leases etc. It is not unreasonable to expect a decent service in return………