Greyhound Racing Ireland stops funds for rehoming programme
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The Irish greyhound racing authority has stopped funding to one of its key welfare programmes due to the process being unsustainable within its budget.
Greyhound Racing Ireland (GRI) in May paused indefinitely its contribution to the Irish Greyhounds to America programme after re-evaluating the cargo rates payable for transporting a dog from Ireland to the US.
The semi-state organisation had since 2019 been paying 50% of the transport costs for all rehomings arranged by Greyhound Pets of America – a non-profit corporation first set up in 1987.
It’s understood that the GPA, in an online meeting with GRI’s head of greyhound welfare and its new CEO Dearbhla O’Brien in the early months of this year, was informed that the rehoming process in its current guise would be paused indefinitely so long as cargo rates remained at their current high levels.
The decision to cut the funding is understood to have been one of Ms O’Brien’s first signature decisions as CEO in terms of financial cutbacks.
Despite the then-pending decision to cut the funding, the GPA was the winner of GRI’s ‘Welfare Award’ for its work in rehoming Irish greyhounds at the authority’s annual awards ceremony in March.
In delivering the award, GRI lauded GPA’s “wonderful contribution” to the sport. The rehoming project saw 157 retired Irish greyhounds rehomed within the US this year with GRI funding, prior to the programme’s Irish funding being suspended.
A spokesperson for GRI said the decision had been taken due to the body having "reached our budget allocation on this programme early in the year”.
“(GRI) intends to continue rehoming greyhounds to the US and the 50% support arrangement will be considered again for 2023, subject to (GRI’s) overall budgetary position,” they added.
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Appearing before the Oireachtas agriculture committee in November 2019, chair of GRI Frank Nyhan described the American rehoming programme as being one of “the two biggest advances that will happen” - the other being the recruitment of a dedicated animal welfare executive - in terms of reforming greyhound welfare in Ireland.
Mr Nyhan had been speaking in the wake of the broadcast of an RTÉ Investigates documentary which claimed that 6,000 animals are culled in Ireland each year for not being fast enough.
In the aftermath of the decision to cut the rehoming funding this year, GRI informed the American group that rehoming can still continue under the programme, so long as the receiving groups in the US and Canada are willing to pay 100% of the transport costs.
Just over 140 animals have since been rehomed in this manner, according to GRI. The restoration of equilibrium to GRI’s finances post-Covid had been one of the key remits of Dearbhla O’Brien’s role, which she officially took up last January, succeeding Ger Dollard.
Last week, the Irish Examiner revealed that she is to step down as chief executive of the organisation at the end of September after just eight months in the job.