Ms Sarah Keane:

Can I just add to some of the comments? In terms of high performance and the idea that when there is no more money we should halve sports, that is a valid discussion to have. However, we are very young as a high performance sporting system. If we do that now, we may be making the decision too soon in terms of the potential for sports. We need to be very careful about doing that at this point. The tiering is starting to happen informally. It is a competitive process and I am part of it so I understand that. It may be that it becomes more formal over time but it needs to be done as part of a planned process, ultimately as part of our vision for Irish high performance sport.

I will give an example of the challenges because some members have asked to get into the detail. Our sport of swimming had a national performance director, because that is the model we were all following in the last cycle, but we could not afford to have a national head coach. We had a person trying to do both roles. We made advances in our sport for sure. We had our best results in 20 years in the 2016 games, but we will not reach the medals unless we split those roles and unless we have that relevant support. We are doing that now, but in order to do it with no extra money we are going to have to cut the amount of exposure and the number of camps we can give our athletes. We have decided we have to. They are the decisions we are being faced with when there is no extra funding. We are making decisions with what we have and we are accountable for what we have, but is that really the best way forward in terms of achieving at the highest levels of world sport? It is not.

The other point I would make is that we have indigenous sport here and we have international Olympic sport. We are almost putting them against each other, because we are announcing pots of funding here and there. If that is additional funding, fine. If it is not additional funding, it comes from somewhere else. Then we are almost pitting people against each other as opposed to all supporting each other as part of one nation. That is very important. There is a sense of that within Irish sport, that there is more and more happening, and more and more promises being made. Even if one takes the campus, great things are happening there but unless the funding increases it comes out of another pot within Irish sport.