Mr. Paul McDermott:

The Olympic Council of Ireland is responsible for delivering the team at an Olympic Games. Two points were raised, one of which was about the management. We have worked hard over the years with the Olympic Council of Ireland to ensure that when athletes from whatever sport go to the Olympic Games, they are surrounded by the same personnel, the same team manager and their coaches if possible, notwithstanding issues around accreditations and so on where there may be smaller numbers. Generally, athletes should be able to replicate their standard high performance environments at the Olympic Games. We do our best to achieve that and the members are right to highlighted it as a performance issue.

We have funded the Olympic Council of Ireland, OCI, for a number of years. People have to remember that there was a time when the Olympic Council of Ireland did not have reserves and did not have money. In order for us to help the Olympic Council of Ireland to contribute to the high performance system, it needed to professionalise, and that is the root of why we continue to pay a contribution towards the salaries of the staff of the Olympic Council of Ireland.

We also fund the programmes that the Olympic Council of Ireland run for Olympic Games. For example, it operated the pre-games camps in London and in Rio de Janeiro and we funded a good part of them. That is why it gets additional money in an Olympic year, because it has additional costs related to bringing support personnel to training camps. We support administration and programmes. We have had an operational agreement in place for about eight years, but that will all be reviewed and taken into account as we plan all of those things at the beginning of the cycle leading up to the Tokyo Olympic Games. We will engage with the OCI in due course and discuss funding and operations.