The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) and its former top security and investigative official are set to enter a Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudication process on Tuesday.
Chris Gordon finished at the IHRB before Christmas, along with the deputy head of security and investigations Declan Buckley. The IHRB has since confirmed their positions have been scrapped, although it insists it retains the capacity to examine potential wrongdoing in the sport.
Gordon has declined to comment on the matter, but it is understood both he, Buckley and the Mandate union representing them are unhappy with elements of their redundancy packages. Failure to reach agreement could see both sides appear before a full WRC hearing.
A spokesman for the IHRB said on Monday: “As a matter of policy, the IHRB does not comment on matters relating to current or former employees.”
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Gordon, a former Garda superintendent, joined the regulator, then known as the Turf Club, in 2010.
In 2020, following a 30-day trial in the High Court, a jury found he had been the subject of an “orchestrated and severe” campaign against his good name by the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association (IRTA).
It followed a defamation action taken by Gordon against the IRTA after it falsely accused him of concocting evidence during an inspection of trainer Liz Doyle’s yard jointly carried out with Department of Agriculture officials.
Gordon was awarded €300,000 in damages and his legal costs. No payment from the IRTA has yet been made.
Separately, the IHRB has confirmed it is continuing to look for a service provider to monitor betting patterns in the sport here. The British Horseracing Authority finished carrying out that function for the Irish regulator last summer. It hasn’t submitted a tender for the new contract.
“Last year, the IHRB began the public procurement process and went to tender for a service provider for betting monitoring and analysis. This process has not yet reached a conclusion,” a spokesman said.
Analysis of betting patterns has come under the spotlight after jockey Philip Byrnes was exonerated of wrongdoing in a controversial race at Wexford last May where he was unseated from his mount Redwood Queen.
An IHRB referrals committee found the betting-pattern evidence furnished to it in the case was “unsatisfactory and unconvincing”. It also dismissed any suggestion that betting or betting patterns formed a motivation for Byrnes’ fall.
