'It should not have happened and won't happen again' - IHRB chief responds to damning €80,000 investigation

The chief executive of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) has said he "fully accepts" the findings of an €80,000 investigation into the misconduct of Irish racing's regulator, which saw €350,000 transferred from a charity account to sort out a cashflow problem within the governing body, and admitted that serious surgery is needed and already under way in the organisation. 

Darragh O'Loughlin, who was appointed to his role in June 2022 after the improper transfer took place, faced questions from the Joint Committee of Agriculture, Food and the Marine at government buildings on Wednesday evening in the aftermath of a damning Mazars report. 

In his opening statement, O'Loughlin said that big changes have been made to enhance financial governance in the organisation after a movement of money which should "never have taken place".

Before that hearing, the Racing Post put questions to O'Loughlin, and when asked whether the charities regulator was in the process of further investigating the matter, he replied: "We understand that the trustees of the JEF [Jockeys Emergency Fund] have engaged with the charities regulator who have kept them informed on the Forvis Mazars Report."

Donal O'Shea, the chief financial officer of the IHRB at the time who was responsible for the transfer of €350,000 according to the report, is the only employee of the IHRB who has subsequently left their post after tendering his resignation in July.

O'Loughlin said he "fully accepts the findings of the Forvis Mazars Report and the IHRB is already implementing the recommendations and is on track to have them completed by the end of this year".

He added: "The IHRB recognises the importance of a robust governance structure and believes that the incident that gave rise to the Forvis Mazars review should not have happened.

"Since commissioning the review, significant changes to enhance financial governance have been implemented by the IHRB or are in progress, guided by draft final reports provided during the review process." 

During the hearing, O'Loughlin was asked whether he was certain a matter like this one could never happen again, to which he replied: "We have controls in place. We have tightened the controls around all these financial transactions and in the case of a transaction of that scale, that cannot happen unless I personally have authorised it. I have to physically sign off on a transaction of that scale before it can happen. 

"We have thresholds in place and anything between €25,000 and €100,000 requires me or the chief financial officer to sign off on it in addition to one other member of senior management. If it's above €100,000 it has to be me and the CFO or another member of senior management."

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Long-awaited report into IHRB scandal makes one thing absolutely clear - the whole situation stinks 

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