Horse Racing Ireland Board

Nicky Hartery

Nicky Hartery was appointed by Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed T.D. to serve as Chairman of the Board of Horse Racing Ireland in May of 2018. 

Nicky has a lifelong interest in horses and is the owner of Caherass Stud in County Limerick. He is the Chairman of Cement Roadstone Ireland (CRH). Nicky is also the Chairman of the Musgrave Group, the Irish food wholesaler and the current President and CEO of Prodigium, a consultancy and business advisory firm. In the past Nicky has held senior management positions with a number of international companies including Dell Computers, Eastman Kodak, EMEA, Verbatim Corporation and General Electric.

Meta Osborne

Meta Osborne has served on the Board of Horse Racing Ireland since December 2013, nominated by the Irish Turf Club and the IHRB. She was Senior Steward of the Turf Club from 2015 to 2017. Meta is an equine vet with a focus on equine reproduction. With her husband, Dermot Cantillon, she co-owns Tinnakill House, a commercial stud-farm in County Laois which has produced multiple Group 1 winners and stakes performers.

Meta graduated from UCD with a degree in veterinary medicine and is a Past-President of the Irish Veterinary Association and Past-President of the Veterinary Council of Ireland. She co-founded WINR (Women’s Irish Network for Racing). She chairs the Veterinary Committee of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board. She is also a member of the Veterinary Committee of the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders' Association.

Meta serves on the Audit Committee & Risk Committee, the Appointments and Remuneration Committee, the Fixtures Committee and the Programmes Committee of Horse Racing Ireland.

Ger Flynn

Ger Flynn has worked in the racing industry for 34 years.  Ger joined the Irish Stablestaff Association in 2004 and was elected Chairperson of the Association in 2019 to present.  Ger is also a member of his local Coan Tidy Towns Committee and Coan Redevelopment Committee.

Carol Nolan

Carol Nolan is Chair of the HRI Industry Services Committee which was established to representing the interests of those employed in the industry.  This Committee includes nominees from SIPTU, Mandate, Irish Jockeys Association, Irish Stable Staff Association and Horse Racing Ireland representing persons employed in the horseracing industry, stable staff and jockeys and qualified riders.  Carol is HRI’s Director of People & Industry Education and oversees the activities carried out by HRI in relation to the support and development of education and training opportunities at every level of the industry.

Laurence McFerran

Laurence McFerran is a member of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board. A retired HR/IR Executive, he was elected to the Irish National Hunt Steeplechase Committee in 2010 followed by election to the Turf Club in 2013.   He is well known in racing circles and currently he is Chairman of the Stewards at Down Royal and Joint Chairman of the Curragh Racecourse Stewards.   He serves on the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board's Disciplinary Panel, Licensing Committee and was Chairman of the Finance Committee.

Christy Grassick

Christy Grassick was nominated by the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders to the Board of Horse Racing Ireland.  Christy has spent a lifetime in the industry having worked at Coolmore since 1976.  Christy is on the boards of the Irish Equine Centre and RJ Goff, and a past Chairman of the ITBA.

Michael Halford

Michael Halford has served on the Board of Horse Racing (HRI) Ireland since May 2016, nominated by Irish Racehorse Trainers. Michael is a leading Irish Flat trainer, based at Copper Beech Stables close to Kildangan, County Kildare. 

Michael was elected to the committee of the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association (IRTA) in 2002 and has held the position of Vice-Chairman since 2008. Michael has recently been appointed to the Committee of Irish Thoroughbred Marketing (ITM) and the HRI Programmes Committee. 

He also served on the ITM committee from February 2005 to December 2007 and was previously a member of the HRI Flat Programmes Working Group. As a representative of the IRTA, Michael was part of the HRI Anti-Doping Task Force for the duration of the project in 2015/16. 

Michael has held a trainers licence since 1983 and has had notable success as a trainer on the Curragh. He gained his first Group 1 success with Casamento in the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster in 2010 and received the Horse Racing Ireland Flat Award that year. He was previously a very capable amateur rider and rode approximately 50 winners.

Conor O'Neill

Conor O’Neill has served on the Board of Horse Racing Ireland since January 2019, nominated by the Association of Irish Racecourses (AIR). Conor was Manager of Limerick Racecourse from 2014 up to 2017. He then moved to Punchestown Racecourse to take the position of Commercial Manager and stayed in that role for two years before becoming CEO of Punchestown racecourse in June 2018.

Conor is also the Chairman of the Association of Irish Racecourses. 

Caren Walsh

Caren Walsh has served on the Board of Horse Racing Ireland since October 2019, nominated by the Association of Irish Racehorse Owners (AIRO). Caren has been an AIRO Council Member since 2013 and is currently Vice-Chairperson of the Association.  Caren also serves on the Programmes and Fixtures Committee of Horse Racing Ireland and HRI’s Welfare Council.

Before moving to Ireland, Caren was the Catering & Hospitality Manager at Salisbury Racecourse in the UK. She also worked at Wincanton Racecourse on race days. Caren has horses in training in both Ireland and the UK.

John Powell

John Powell has served on the Board of Horse Racing Ireland since May 2016, nominated by the I.N.H.S. Committee until December 2017 and the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board from then on. John was a senior Steward of the INHS Committee from December 2014 to December 2016. John is a Veterinary Surgeon by profession, having worked both in private practice and with the Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine.

A former President of the Veterinary Council of Ireland, the Veterinary Officers Association and the Irish Veterinary Association, John was awarded an honorary fellowship with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in London in 1993.

John also served as a steward of the INHS Committee from 1999 to 2002 and was originally appointed to that committee in 1994. He is currently a member of the Appeals body of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board.

Daragh Fitzpatrick

Robert Nixon

Robert Nixon was appointed by the Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to the Board of Horse Racing Ireland in August 2016. A graduate of The University of Leeds, he has been a livestock farmer in County Down and is the retired proprietor of a floor coverings manufacturing business.  

Robert has had a long association with racing, both as a keen racegoer and an owner of point-to-point and National Hunt horses.  He is a Director of Downpatrick Racecourse with particular interest in the financial aspects of the company.

Elizabeth Headon

Elizabeth Headon was appointed by the Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to the Board of Horse Racing Ireland in November 2016 and reappointed in 2020. Elizabeth heads corporate communications at Bus Eireann, the national bus company, and was previously a corporate affairs adviser with the Alliance for Racing and Breeding and Coolmore Stud, among others. 

Formerly Elizabeth was a Director of public relations firms Murray Consultants and Gibney Communications and Chief Executive of the Digicel Foundation Haiti. She was a non-executive director of titanium minerals miner Kenmare Resources plc and served as the first Chair of the company's Sustainability Committee.

Elizabeth qualified with an MBA from University College Dublin and has a BA in English and French and an MA in English from NUI Galway. She is a member of the Institute of Directors. 

Peter Nolan

Peter Nolan has served on the Board of HRI since November 2016. He is a finance specialist with extensive experience as a non-executive director and in governance, strategy, finance, risk management and compliance. His executive experience includes senior treasury roles with Rabobank International and with Kerry Group plc. He is a member of HRI’s Audit and Risk Committee and has served on a number of other HRI Board sub-committees.

Peter is a non-executive director of Western Union Payment Services Ireland Ltd., Western Union’s European retail payment services business. He was appointed a non-executive director of Quinn Insurance DAC (Under Administration) after the Company entered Administration. He is a non-executive director of The Educena Foundation, a charity which enables trusteeship in the voluntary post-primary education sector in Ireland. He was previously a non-executive director of the CCD, Ireland's world class international conference and event venue.