A ban on horse-drawn carriages in New York City’s Central Park by 2028 will end an industry that has provided a livelihood to hundreds of Irish emigrants for more than 160 years.
The legislation, passed on Thursday afternoon in a vote by the city’s council, is known as Romanch’s Law, after 18-year-old Indian tourist Romanch Mahajan, who died last June following a carriage-related crash in Central Park while visiting New York with his family.
Among those gathered outside City Hall in lower Manhattan in advance of Thursday’s vote was political activist Curtis Sliwa, a two-time Republican nominee for New York City mayor.
“My wife Nancy and I have supported banning these horses being tortured since 2020. It was part of my 2021 mayoral campaign against [former mayor] Eric Adams. He made fun of me, but it’s good to see everybody get on board with this campaign,” Sliwa told The Irish Times.
“Today is history in the making. It should have happened a long, long time ago. Imagine, there are other cities who have stopped this barbaric behaviour, even in third-world countries. We’re one of the holdouts.”
Carriage operators and their families argue that proposals to help those affected by the ban find other jobs do not go far enough, while the Transport Workers Union is expected to challenge the decision.
Among those opposing the ban are Irish-born operators who fear losing not only their livelihoods but businesses into which they have invested decades of work and savings.
Conor McHugh, 62, from Co Leitrim, arrived in New York in May 1986 and began driving a horse-drawn carriage several months later. He has since become a part-owner of Clinton Park Stables.
[ ‘It’s a dying trade’: Dublin’s horse-drawn carriage drivers stage protestOpens in new window ]
“I’ve invested not only my life’s savings, but my life, into this business. I own two horse-drawn carriages, and part of the stable, and I also manage the stable where we keep the horses,” he said.
“This is what I’ve put my time and effort into, and I’ve worked hard for it. If you’d told me on the day I arrived in the US that one day everything I own would be taken off me on trumped-up charges, I’d have told you that could never happen, yet here we are.
“They’re not only taking away what I own, but what everybody in the business owns.”
His friend Thomas Quinn, a native of Co Sligo who has worked with horses in New York City for 31 years, said operators were being unfairly blamed for wider public safety concerns.
“We’re being thrown under the bus, really. It was incredibly unfortunate that a child was injured and killed, it really was, and we are so sorry for the family,” he said.
He argued that the horse and carriage operators were being used “as a scapegoat”.
Quinn pointed to recent fatalities involving scooters and bicycles, arguing that the carriage industry was being singled out for accidents that could occur in other forms of transport.
“If this does all go through now, what does the future hold? I’m 58 years old. I mean, what do you do at 58 when your livelihood is gone?” he said.
The bill now goes to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has 30 days to act, but is expected to support it into law.