SPORTS GRANTS: THE FEDERATION of Irish Sport met Minister Leo Varadkar yesterday in an attempt to maintain funding at current levels. It is the first meeting since the Minister was appointed at the beginning of this year.
The probability is Varadkar smiled and didn’t commit to anything, except that funding would be reduced again as it has been for the last two years.
The numbers in respect of the federation, which represents 70 governing bodies in sport, don’t make good reading.
In 2008, at its peak, sport was getting €311 million.
This year the figure shrunk to €86.4 million.
The sports capital programme has been suspended for three years, although the federation recently learned that €30 million is available for 2012 and the construction of facilities at the National Sports Campus has yet to commence.
“He’s stated on the record that he hasn’t been overly exposed [to sport]. He compares himself to his Cabinet colleagues with five All-Ireland medals in their back pocket – he feels he probably doesn’t have the same sporting pedigree.
“But it’s not necessarily a bad thing in some ways, because perhaps what Irish sport needs is for somebody to step back and take an objective look at it,” said the federation chief executive, Sarah O’Connor.
“I think in making the case for sport, if someone was to stand back and look at it objectively and look at the logical arguments, then there is actually a strong case for it to be supported.”
Few will know until the Budget arrives what is in store.
But O’Connor points out that aside from the health issues there are huge economic arguments. Convincing the right people of these is the federation’s greatest task.
“In Ireland there’s no debate that the horse and greyhound racing sector is an industry,” she says.
“But the facts would indicate that they support just under 20,000 jobs and generate a value of just under €1 billion for Ireland, whereas sport [supports] just over 38,000 jobs and it supports €1.9bn of household spending, 1.4 per cent of GDP.”
The federation was not invited to the recent Global Economic Summit, which illustrated how far down the pecking order the sector was in Irish economic thinking.
O’Connor is optimistic but not wholly convinced the Government understands the worth or indeed the mass of the organisation, which is now trying to organise itself into an effective lobby group.
“The word is that they are looking at a 15 to 20 per cent reduction over three years, so we are looking at maybe 5 per cent this year,” she says.
“Sport would prefer to see Sports Council funding kept where it is and for the sports capital programme to be €27 million [instead of €30 million], because we are talking about [the Sports Council losing] €3 million.
“I don’t know how much traction we have in terms of changing their minds ahead of December 6th, but certainly we do want to change their mind that if they go ahead with the 15 to 20 per cent cut over the next three years, we are back to where we were about 2003.”
