The president of the Olympic Council of Ireland, Mr Pat Hickey, yesterday defended his controversial criticism of the performance of the Irish sailing team during the Athens Olympics.
Mr Hickey told an Oireachtas committee that the sport's administrators had received substantial sums of taxpayers' money, yet the team had not won any Olympic medals.
"They had been indicating that they were going to win medals since 1992. I just made a simple comment that I don't blame sailing athletes whatsoever, but I blame the administration. In my opinion, if the money spent on sailing had been spent on boxing, we would have had four other Andy Lees there," he told the Joint Committee on Arts, Sport, Tourism, Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
The committee is questioning a number of sporting bodies as part of an examination of the Irish performance at the Olympics in Athens.
Mr Hickey said other sports, such as boxing, wrestling and clay-pigeon shooting, would be worthy beneficiaries when funding was allocated over the next eight to 12 years.
Mr Hickey faced robust questioning over his 14-year tenure as president of the OCI and rejected Ms Fiona O'Malley's assertion that it was time for "fresh blood". Ms O'Malley said sporting organisations had privately criticised the organisation, but were reluctant to do so publicly because of fears over losing funding.
She also said there was a perception among athletes that the OCI was being run for the benefit of officials rather than sports men and women. Mr Hickey, however, said the OCI was a democracy, and it was up to sporting groups to decide whether or not he should be re-elected. He said the OCI did not control the "purse-strings" for athletes and there was no fear of losing out on funding by criticising the organisation. Most funding was in the hands of the Irish Sports Council, he said.
He also said the continuing controversy over the positive drugs tests for Cian O'Connor's gold-medal winning horse, Waterford Crystal, were damaging the image of Irish sport. He added that there was a good chance of a successful appeal against the loss of a medal following the controversy over the handling of the drugs-test samples.
