National governing body funding unchanged

Payday for the 59 national governing bodies of Irish sport – and bar some minor trimmings around the edges, Government funding for 2014 remains virtually unchanged from last year with an overall allocation of €25 million announced in Dublin this morning.

This accounts for well over half of the Irish Sports Council overall budget of €42.5 million, and despite initial fears that the last Budget would further erode the money available for spending, high performance and overall core funding is slightly up on 2013.

Of the €25 million, €10.64m will be divided between the 59 national governing bodies – up from €10.53m last year. High performance funding for 18 sports – plus Paralympics and the Olympic Council of Ireland – is also slightly up on last year, €7.11m compared to €7.06m.

However the allocation for individual athlete grants under the carding scheme will be slightly down on the €1.7m awarded last year, at around €1.6m: these exact allocations will be announced later this week, with certain governing bodies (athletics, swimming and sailing) already taking over the responsibility for distributing these funds under their own high performance plans.

Kieran Mulvey, Chairman of the Irish Sports Council, described the 2014 funding as the "middle space" between the London and Rio Olympics. While overall funding took a major drop in 2013, post Olympic year, he also outlined the importance of improving the current level of funding in the two-year build-up to Rio.

“I think this year is the floor in the context of funding,” said Mulvey. “And it is imperative now that we build again, especially in light of improvements in the economy.”

Inevitably some of the national governing bodies did better than others. The bigger sports – athletics, boxing, horse sport, sailing and swimming – all held up well: the core grant for athletics is slightly down (€885,702 compared to €899,190 last year), and there are slight drops too for boxing (€366,713 compared to €372,300), and also sailing (€298,400 compared to €302,944).

The biggest payout for 2014 will go the Special Olympics Ireland, who will get €1.4 million compared to €1.2 million last year, but with the Special Olympic Ireland Games taking place in Limerick in June, there was an additional provision of €200,000.

"I'd glad to say there is not too much pain for Irish sport funding this year," said John Treacy, CEO of the Irish Sports Council. "Sport hasn't wasted the economic downturn either, with participating numbers increasing across the board, and all the governing bodies deserve credit for the work being done."

In addition, €4.98m million will go to the Local Sports Partnerships (LSPs) to encourage participation, while a further €583,000 has been dedicated to Women in Sport activities across the national governing bodies.

At the high performance level, the grants of €7.11m – ranging from €800,000 to Athletics Ireland to €40,000 to the Judo association – is effectively what buys success on the competitive stage.

Despite the overall fall in funding in the recent years, this level of success actually reached a record high in 2013, with 67 medals won last at European and World events across range of sports.

For the first time, golf is also being supported as a single entity, with establishment of the Confederation of Golf in Ireland.