O'Donoghue hits back at Egan's comments

' STARTER' CONTROVERSY:THE FALLOUT from last weekend's Bellewstown "starter" controversy continues as the association representing Turf Club officials has criticised the regulatory body's attitude towards its own integrity services.

The Turf Club Officials Association, a part of the Mandate Union, has hit back at the Turf Club chief executive Denis Egan for his comments following last Saturday’s events at Bellewstown where the well-backed favourite for the feature race hadn’t even arrived at the start before the race began.

Egan subsequently pointed the finger at some senior officials who refuse to work Saturday evening fixtures due to budget cutbacks that have ruled out extra payments for such dates.

Instead the majority of officials on duty at Bellewstown were part-timers, including starter Derek Cullen who was the official starter at a meeting for the first time.

The decision to not pay extra for working Saturday evenings comes on the back of cuts of almost €1 million in the last year in Horse Racing Ireland’s financial allocation to the Turf Club.

“Officials are most disappointed that Denis saw fit to implicate us in this matter,” Michael O’Donoghue, chairman of the officials association, said yesterday. “He is, after all, responsible for rostering and by putting these new recruits on the roster he accepted their competence.”

There are almost 20 full-time officials in the association. Nearly the same number of part-timers also work for the Turf Club on short-term contracts.

Egan argued earlier this week that if more senior staff had been on duty at Bellewstown, last weekend’s scenes, which were described as a “farce” by Michael Hourigan, trainer of the horse left behind, Warcraft, may have been avoided.

However, O’Donoghue argued yesterday: “We went to the Turf Club last November and presented proposals that would have seen them save between 13 and 15 per cent cuts per full-time official. As part of that offer each of us said we would work five extra Sundays for no fee outside of our contract but the Turf Club at that time demanded 10.

“But these cutbacks haven’t been coming just since the recession started. They have been coming for the last few years and we have ended up being disappointed that cuts are taking place in integrity as the integrity services are paramount to the success of racing. We are certainly disappointed with the cuts in integrity that are disproportionate to prizemoney levels.

“As officials we are all multi-functional in that we cover a range of duties and that gives the Turf Club huge scope to roster. But they rejected our proposals in November and it is now July. Integrity works around the experience of officials but nothing has progressed.”

A Turf Club investigation into the events at Bellewstown is currently taking place.

Warcraft, which is owned by the Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary, was being led to the start by his jockey and was half a furlong away when the race began.

In a subsequent stewards inquiry, he was deemed to have been withdrawn and punters were refunded.