Mr. John Treacy:

If I can make a very important point, when it comes to the three main field sports I do not think we should be taking away money from them because they deliver a huge range of participation right around the country. To go back on a historical point, when the cuts came in 2008 the Irish Sports Council at the time sat down with the three main field sports and, essentially, what we did was we asked them to take the first cut, which was 25%. We spoke to them and negotiated with them and all three of them said "Yes". What we were actually doing was safeguarding the other NGBs and the three main field sports went along with the policy decision Sport Ireland had made. People were taking it on the chin.

What we really need to be doing is working with the collective NGBs. We are putting more and more rules and regulations in place and it is a huge administrative burden for the governing bodies. We want them to have very good corporate governance in place. We want to have risk management in place. We want to have all the financial procedures in place, which is critically important if one is investing taxpayers' money. We need to resource governing bodies. One of the things that we have been able to do is start putting in professional people in governing bodies and that has made a huge difference. Now is the time to start reinvesting in the core NGBs so that we can grow them. If we go back to this morning's discussion on the federation, a small amount of money will do a huge amount and will really add to the participation in a wide range of sports. Not everyone wants to kick a football or throw a rugby ball. There are lots of opportunities and going forward we really need to strengthen the NGBs so that they can deliver. They are delivering and the local sports partnerships, LSPs, are helping them to deliver at local level as well.