Messing with greyhound owners is a moral hazard

THIS Government is nothing if not consistent – it rarely fails to reward failure, what economists call ‘moral hazard’. In economics, moral hazard occurs when one person takes more risks because someone else bears the cost of those risks.

The plan to sell Harold’s Cross – one of the Irish Greyhound Board’s most profitable tracks – is almost a definition of the term ‘moral hazard’.

The IGB is rewarding its own catastrophic failure by selling off Harold’s Cross, one of its most successful tracks.

Studying the background to the deal, it is like a commercial version of an old racecourse trick perpetrated by dodgy geezers in the car park.

The profits from flogging off Harold’s Cross will cover the cost of IGB’s calamitous management over the past decade – and justify the €100,000-plus salaries enjoyed by its 11 most senior executives.

If you need data to support this accusation, try this:

The IGB has reduced prize money for owners and trainers from €22.6m in 2007 to €6.6m in 2015 and attendances fell from 1.4 million to 675,000 in the same period.

Tote profits fell from €6m in 2007 to €1m in 2015.

In 2006 income generated from greyhound racing outperformed horse racing by €1.5m; by 2015 horse racing outperformed greyhound racing by €60m.

At the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee last week, the board of the IGB had the moxie to declare that they were running on their successful record.

The IGB board justified the enormous salaries – €1.2m is earned by just 11 executives who are clearly not paid on results – saying they need to attract the best talent.

They pointed out that they continue to run an annual €2m surplus but failed to say that they had cut prize money by €31.42m since 2006 – so it was the owners and trainers of dogs that paid for the surplus.

Owners and breeders are the lifeblood of greyhound racing, usually working men and women who keep their dogs in the yard.

I met trainer Dolores Ruth recently, a woman from Dublin’s Liberties who has had winners in both the British and Irish greyhound derbies, and whose unique talent is recognised internationally.

Dolores was off to the US seeking work because she cannot afford to live in Ireland any more because prize money has been severely shrunk in tandem with the industry.

Economist Jim Power wrote a report in 2010 saying the greyhound industry made a valuable contribution to rural and urban life. He found at that time that it employed 10,300 people directly and indirectly.

The Irish Greyhound Board is controlled by Minister for Agriculture – a member of a political party that has close ties to the horse-racing and trilby-hat brigade.

I’ve heard some of them dismiss ‘the dogs’ as a pastime for ‘plebeians in flat caps’.

For the past 11 weeks, there have been pickets outside Shelbourne Park, where they have been showing English dog-racing on television, while Harold’s Cross is padlocked.

In the background, the IGB has been trying to come up with a doneand-dusted deal for Harold’s Cross.

Last week it announced the sale of Harold’s Cross to the Department of Education, with no mention of whether or not tendering and other procedures were adhered to while securing a fair price.

The IGB was telling its friends last Thursday that the Department of Education was offering €23m for the site. A reliable source in property sales told me that the top offer made to the IGB’s agents was €7m.

Talk is cheap but Education Minister Richard Bruton will be careful not to get involved in any deal not conducted strictly in accordance with proper practice.

But if his department pays over the odds, it will make life much easier for the IGB.

A quick sale at a top of the market price would also ease the Minister for Agriculture’s burden: presumably Michael Creed sees dogs as a distraction and trusts the IGB to make competent decisions.

CREED is consumed by Brexit but he is from Cork, as is Simon Coveney. Both of them are in Dublin, both of them near the IGB’s three most popular and profitable tracks. The people who have closed down dog racing in Dublin have threatened to extend their picket of the capital’s tracks to a boycott of the politicians threatening their livelihood and sport.

I live close to Shelbourne Park and regularly see the pickets that loyal dog lovers refuse to pass – and see older men and women out walking their greyhounds.

They are not the sort of people who get involved in politics but they have the support of the community who see them like pigeon fanciers – decent people who enjoy their sport and don’t bother anybody.

A wise government would not mess dog owners around – but can you ever really trust an administration that consistently rewards failure?