Mr. Kieran Mulvey:

I do not want to be too strong in my comments. Deputy Munster asked if I was given a direction. I was not. I had a conversation with a Minister and senior officials of the Department - who have since retired - that one would normally have when one is appointed chairman of a State board. There had previously been a lot of controversy when Ministers and taoisigh were castigated by the former president of the OCI publicly and internationally. There had been one or two rows, including with the OCI, and I was asked to go in and ensure the waters were calm. If we had been aware of the situation, we would not necessarily have interfered. There was some issue around ticketing which I was not aware of. As Ms Sarah Keane said, she was not aware of it until Rio. It is an issue I would have normally raised by way of conversation with the president of the OCI or the Minister. I would have said there is something going on here that I am unaware of and it does not sound appropriate or proper to me. On occasion over the past number of years, Mr. Treacy and I have had to approach the OCI and its officials regarding certain sports when complaints had been made to us about arrangements for camps, transport or logistics. In such cases, we made those representations and asked the OCI to do something about it so it did not blow up in our face because an organisation did not get appropriate accommodation or transport. In a sense, we were trying to do that all along.

The Deputy asked me about whether there is any strong political direction being given to us in any particular area. From time to time, Ministers will call us in and say, for example, they want the women in sport programme improved and want to see what we can do around that. Certain issues have been raised with us regarding certain federations and we have been asked to do something about it. We have had political conversations recently around general representation but they are not firm policy directions. I would be nervous of getting a policy direction in case it could be said we did not have the right approach. We want to get the OCI to the position it has identified here, that is a reformed, functioning and transparent OCI. As with any federation, Sport Ireland will support it entirely. The OCI and Paralympics Ireland take precedence in terms of international bodies that accredit athletes at the highest levels in international games. We play a supportive role in that. The OCI is autonomous by charter and international regulation and we have to move with it and work with it in partnership. We should not attract opprobrium to that. That is what we are trying to do. We want to work with the Minister, the OCI and Department officials. The OCI is evidently moving very strongly but we will not get it 100% resolved within the next six or 12 months. Timing is a fact of life and we need to help it financially to get it where it needs to get.

I had an exchange with Deputy Troy earlier and I wish to withdraw my remark.