Ms Sarah Keane:

As a board, we have prepared a budget for 2017 covering everything we are going to do. It includes a figure for Sport Ireland funding; therefore, from a governance perspective, it is important for us to have clarity on the matter. If we are not getting that money, we are going to have to either cull certain activities or else run another deficit. We ran a deficit of approximately €800,000 last year. For obvious reasons, as an organisation we cannot keep running deficits. From a governance perspective, the board will not be prepared to do so. I do not believe that at this point it has impacted, but it will over time if funding is not restored. Having said that - again, I am speaking for myself because as a board we need to look at our strategy and what we want to do - if we can rebuild the reputation of the organisation, the Olympic rings are a big brand and I hope that in time we can bring in additional funding through the IOC and the EOC, as well as through renewed sponsorship agreements etc. I would like to see us being a net contributor to Irish sport and not necessarily taking money from Sport Ireland. It will still receive the money, but it would be able to put it into federations and athletes. Instead we would be putting more money into the system.

The OCI currently puts quite a substantial amount of funding into the system through what we receive from the IOC, the Olympic solidarity programmes and others things. How that happened and worked in the past was not as transparent. That is one of the things we want to ensure transparency around going forward.