There will be no funding whatsoever for the Irish Amateur Swimming Association (IASA) until there is "root and branch" reform in the organisation, the Minister for Sport insisted in the Dail.

During questions about the follow-up to the Murphy Report on Sexual Abuse in Swimming Dr McDaid was adamant that "it is not enough for an executive council of the IASA to pick up the Murphy report and to tick off the recommendations one by one and to think that that is the job well done".

"There is a tremendous future for swimming. The Government has given a commitment to a 50metre pool. There is more money available for swimming but it is swimming itself that is the problem," he told Mr Michael Ferris (Lab, Tipperary South), who asked the Minister to consider setting up some sort of contingency plan for funding elite swimmers pending reforms so they would not suffer in their preparations for international competitions.

The Minister said, however, that most of the funding in past was spent on elite athletes in international competitions and this was where most of the abuse took place.

"The deputy is saying that young athletes are now suffering. I recently listened to an answering machine in the swimming association which said they were not able to man it because I wouldn't give them any funding.

"That is not accurate. Of course I care about young people involved in swimming but the money that was previously given by the Government to the organisation was misused and I am not going to reconsider funding until I am confident that that has totally been restored in the whole association."

He told deputies he would consider funding for the association as soon as IASA consulted its wider membership "whom I believe, must be satisfied as to the adequacy of procedures and arrangements in place in their organisation to secure a safe environment for their younger members".

Mr Bernard Allen (FG, Cork North-Central) questioned the Minister's "illogical" decision to change the rules for funding the Irish Schools' Swimming Association and put them in with the IASA in the same year that a question mark hangs over that organisation. Up to this year they were funded separately, had a separate structure and separate organisation and had no hand, act or part in the present tragic controversy.

Dr McDaid said: "I want one single body in swimming and the Government and the Department will only be funding one organisation in swimming - one organisation which will be creditable and which will administer the sport and which will be answerable to FINA."