Jim McDaid, the Minister for Sport, may be asked to mediate in the new row which is putting the participation of Sonia O'Sullivan and Catherina McKiernan, among others, in the Olympic Games at Sydney at risk.
Within days of the decision by the Olympic Council of Ireland to by-pass the Athletics Association of Ireland and dispatch contract forms directly to the 13 athletes who have achieved qualifying standards, another, potentially damaging issue has emerged.
It obliges selected athletes to waive their marketing rights, covering areas such as sponsorship, advertising and exclusive media interviews unless they have IOC approval.
Essentially, this applies to only a handful of athletes such as O'Sullivan, McKiernan and Mark Carroll.
The Olympic Council claim they must protect the interests of their sponsors Adidas and where there is no direct conflict of interests, they will not be unreasonable in facilitating exceptions.
This has not eased the apprehension of either the athletes or their agents however, as they contemplate possible losses of revenue in a lucrative year.
It's a new and largely unwelcome complication in the well-documented rift between the OCI and AAI, the successor to the national athletics federation BLE, over the clothing issue following the notorious incident involving Sonia O'Sullivan in Atlanta.
On that occasion the OCI advised that Reebok gear, O'Sullivan's sponsor, was to be worn at all times on team business but that Reebok gear was optional for competition. However BLE insisted that Asics gear was compulsory on the track. The result was that O'Sullivan was humiliated by being forced to strip before her 5,000-metre heat.
The dispute, rooted in the much wider issue of whether the International Olympic Committee or the International Amateur Athletics Federation has primacy in the presentation of the track and field programme in the Olympic Games has embroiled many countries in recent years.
Holland is the latest to settle on a compromise, leaving Ireland and South Africa as the only two countries in which the controversy remains unresolved.
Last year the athletics authorities proposed a deal whereby their members would wear the official Adidas gear on every occasion during the Olympic festival, except in competition. This was rejected out of hand by the OCI on the basis that it would invalidate their £600,000 sponsorship with Adidas.
Ironically, the AAI has already given clearances for Patsy McGonigle and Sean Naughton, manager and coach respectively of the Olympic athletics team, to wear Adidas clothing at all times during their stay in Sydney.
