The Irish were quiet at Cheltenham last weekend. Actually, they were inaudible and invisible after the early drama of wins in the amateur chase and cross-country on Friday. It felt, rightly or wrongly, like a sign of the times, a gauge of the sudden downturn Irish racing is suffering, both on and off the track.

Of course, we were not voicing such thoughts during the summer, when every Flat race worth winning seemed to be exported either by Aidan O'Brien or Jim Bolger. But that was in another time and, effectively, a different sport. Only now, with the advance of the jumps code that enchants the Irish in a way the Flat has never done, can the depth of the worry lines be seen clearly.

Financially, Irish racing is close to crisis, a situation their administrators at Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) sought to address at a board meeting yesterday. And it is not as if there is consolation to be found in the horses. For the first time in many years, the jumping stocks of Ireland look markedly inferior to their British rivals.

Until now, there have been many reasons to envy Irish racing, paramount among them the financial underpinning of the sport at government level. The sums were not only significant - €76 million (about £64 million) this year - but apparently secure. Unlike their British counterparts, the Irish parliament valued their racing industry - and unashamedly enjoyed it to the full.

As a result, prize-money soared to levels that could only be dreamed about in Britain. With corporate sponsorship similarly plentiful, there were ample incentives for new racehorse owners - and no incentive at all to do as the Irish had traditionally done, sell their best horses to Britain.

The golden era brought rich rewards. Racing became a destination, an aspiration. Horses such as Kicking King, War Of Attrition, Hardy Eustace and Brave Inca attracted vast followings as they picked off the elite Cheltenham prizes. But that was then. The here and now is starkly different.

Funding has been drastically cut by a government that also intends to double betting tax to 2 per cent. The ramifications are so alarming that HRI seems in a state of shock. Reductions in prize-money and fixtures could be a short-term remedy but the malaise runs deep - times were so good that it appears nobody thought to adopt the “rainy day” policy of prudence.

The Irish might find this easier to bear if they had a champion horse or two. But at Cheltenham in March they drew a blank in the four feature races and then, still more mortifying, they also conceded all the comparable events at their own Punchestown Festival.

The sense of panic over monetary matters is now matched by that over the dearth of top-class Irish chasers. For the first time in recent years, there was not one Irish runner in the Paddy Power Gold Cup last Saturday and graded chases within Ireland customarily attract a mere handful of familiar names.

Only War Of Attrition features at shorter than 50-1 in betting for the King George or Gold Cup and the bareness of the Irish cupboard is encouraging Paul Nicholls to dispatch more of his chasers to mop up what remains of the Celtic Tiger wealth.

And the thing is that none of this is to be celebrated. Smugness is utterly inappropriate. For if March comes around and Irish racing has sunk deeper into the doldrums, the Festival will be only half the event.

Sunday racing can work. More than 16,000 people at Cheltenham this week were happy proof of that, as were the family-orientated full houses at such summer venues as Chester and Perth. But one fact remains unarguable - it is not fulfilling its original aim in Britain, because far too much of it is mediocre to the point of unwatchable.

This was one of several reasons to feel depressed, last week, at news that racing had scrapped its plan to leave four Sundays blank in 2009 and instead filled them with the usual meagre and unmemorable fare.

A lot of research had gone into the fixture furlough. It formed one of the principal planks of the extensive fixture review and was amply justified on the grounds that it gave the certainty of a few free Sundays to jockeys, trainers, stable staff and everyone else connected with the running of horses.

Not allowed, apparently. The bookmakers were having none of it.

As if they do not have enough betting products, from the exotic to the barely believable, to keep their shop customers happy, they kicked up such a fuss about racing's attempts to take four days a year off that it put the entire levy deal at risk.

It seems that the British Horseracing Authority was in a cleft stick. Stay true to its principles - and to the wishes of its constituents - and the certainty of future funding collapses. Extraordinarily, the betting industry still has this hold over racing. Shamefully, it still chooses to use it selfishly.

We will not notice any difference next year, with the usual endless run of largely anonymous Sunday meetings. But plenty who work in racing might just have appreciated the difference if a worthy initiative had not been held to ransom.