Dundalk Stadium has been granted conditional planning permission to provide all-weather jumps racing at the Racecourse Road track.
Plans for the €3.5 million floodlit national hunt track were revealed last December after the venue collected the Racecourse of the Year award at the HRI Awards in Leopardstown.
However, Dundalk Racing (1999) Ltd only submitted their planning application in January, with the process delayed following the request for additional information, including a Natura Impact Statement in March.
The venue – Ireland’s only all-weather racecourse – has been given the go ahead for the “widening of the existing horse racing track at two sections and the provision of fences for jump racing”.
As part of the application, they have also been given the go ahead to install two oil tanks and boiler containers for undersoil heating to the new area of the track.
Plans for the proposed new facility at Dundalk received a mixed response from the racing community when they were unveiled prior to last Christmas. The proposal is something of a hybrid with an undersoil-heated grass surface envisaged on two new straights and the current polytrack all-weather surface on the flat course used on the bends. Obstacles will be placed on the straights.
“It will be turf on both straights, a special design that will give excellent drainage, and the undersoil heating will mean it will be an all-weather facility. We’re totally confident it can work. It’s designed for good ground horses and it will allow those horses have a programme, instead of what can happen now with trainers and owners having to say in September or October that they’ll wait until the spring to run their horse again,” Dundalk’s chief executive Jim Martin told The Irish Times last December.
He said that issues will have to be sorted out in terms of funding and also fixtures but it was the Stadium’s hope to have the facility open by 2016.