Dressage training barns on the southeast coast of Ireland

[SBrentnall]

We’re considering a move away from the US, and are looking at the east coast of Ireland (county Dublin, and south).

Can anyone recommend a good FEI training barn in those areas? I’m looking for:

• Full livery
• 5x weekly training rides or private lessons with FEI trainer - minimum Int-I
• Daily grooming
• Daily turnout
• Blanketing and unblanketing as needed
• Holding for the vet
• Daily feeding of grain and supplements (I will prepare baggies)

This is a typical training package in Southern California. Does something similar exist on the southeast coast of Ireland?

[CanteringCarrot]

I would ask this over on the Horse and Hound forum. There are a few members from Ireland over there.

[clanter]

might contact Expatsi, a company that helps Americans move abroad

They say they are seeing a months worth of requests per day now. Popular destinations being Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.

However they cautioned about some of those governments shift to the right

[SBrentnall]

Thanks! I asked over there as well.

[SBrentnall]

Luckily, I’m a Brit living in the US, so I can move to Ireland pretty easily. And even if they were to undergo a significant shift to the right, none of those places would come close to the right-wing government we’re about to have in the US.

[cardinale]

I’m sure you’ve thought of this already, but contact Dressage Ireland. Someone there might be willing to talk to you.

Dressage Ireland

Also, perhaps try just searching Yelp if it exists in that area, or the Irish equivalent.

I’m trying to do the same thing for France. Have some good contacts for information but for some reason they are slow in getting back to someone from America (gee, I wonder why?). Horse and Hound doesn’t have much for France. Anyone with knowledge of dressage barns in Brittany, Normandy, Pays de la Loire or the Northeast, feel free to share.

[Willesdon]

Dressage is not a yet a big thing in Ireland. Horses are more commonly used for racing, foxhunting, show jumping or, to lesser extent, eventing - riding “more for sport than for art”. But dressage is growing from an invisible start. The Irish Dressage Society was established in 1989, renamed Dressage Ireland in 1996, and it now has a programme of shows pretty much all year round and the national championships run for three days. In 1998 the first Irish team competed at the World Equestrian Games. In 2019 an Irish team qualified for the Tokyo Olympics for the first time but it was decided not to send one. There was an individual rider, Abi Lyle, at Paris 2024.

There is definitely an opportunity to further build up the sport of dressage in the Republic!