Horse Sport Ireland announce move to new headquarters and equestrian campus

The Board and Acting CEO of Horse Sport Ireland have today announced a major boost for the Irish sport horse sector with a planned move to a newly designed administrative headquarters and equestrian campus in Greenogue, Rathcoole, County Dublin.

Horse Sport Ireland’s vision is to have the best riders and horses in the world. The new administrative headquarters and equestrian campus will support performance enhancement across all of the high-performance disciplines, Show jumping, Dressage, Eventing and Para-Dressage with the intention of delivering consistent podium results at International, Europeans, Worlds and Olympic Games. The new facility builds upon the momentum created by the recent successes across all sport disciplines and breeding, including the World Equestrian Games Silver medal, European Jumping Team Gold, FEI Nations Cup Final, and multiplicity of wins across age categories at FEI World Breeding Championships in Lanaken.  It is anticipated that Horse Sport Ireland will enable the industry to fulfil its true potential through the delivery of a large programme of world class educational and coaching programmes.

Another core function of Horse Sport Ireland is to provide direction on national breeding policy, which will in turn facilitate increased economic activity and value for Irish sport horse producers. The campus and new headquarters will serve as a focal point for breeding and production initiatives, designed to improve, promote and market Irish bred horses.

Commenting on the move, Mary Lambkin Coyle, acting Chair of Horse Sport Ireland said, “a national training centre will provide leadership on all aspects of development for the Irish sport horse industry, which been identified as a desirable goal ever since the foundation of Horse Sport Ireland. It is most gratifying to see this goal finally realized and it is a major achievement that took a great deal of vision and hard work to bring together the ideas and resources to make it happen. Special credit must go to Joe Reynolds, Acting CEO, who has led this initiative from the beginning and who explored many options until finally the Greenogue Campus emerged as the best fit for our brief. This represents a confluence of many positive factors including location and facilities and truly provides a superb showcase for our industry which compares favourably with national centres in other countries. These world class facilities will signal to the world the high ambitions we have for our Irish sport horse industry and provide important support in realizing those ambitions”.

Joe Reynolds, Acting CEO, said “this move has been driven by the Strategic Plan 2019-2024 which proposed the establishment of a national training centre for the Irish equestrian industry in breeding, production, high performance sport, coaching and education. This new facility will be an integrated centre which will allow for seamless interaction between staff and programmes across breeding, production, high performance sport, coaching and education which will be a cornerstone of the next generation of development of quality sport horses and Irish athletes. It is anticipated that the new campus will serve as a key hub for the sport horse industry and the affiliate family, providing a centralised space for resources and knowledge transfer. 

The move to the new equestrian facility will commence in early 2021 with the office headquarters expected to be ready from January 2022.

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