Dr. Tom Daly:

I thank the Deputy for his questions and encouraging remarks. I will deal with his questions in order and defer to Ms Kerrane on certain aspects.

As regards the Garda inquiry, it is our understanding that there have been Garda inquiries into the issue of the sports capital grant. We do not believe they involve any current employees of Cycling Ireland. Our CEO was in touch with An Garda Síochána. He was asked to assist by way of giving a statement to verify some facts, but we do not believe he or any other employee of the organisation is the subject of those inquiries. I have no knowledge of the status of the inquiry.

The second issue raised by the Deputy relates to communication, or a lack thereof, between the board and the members. I sat through the annual general meeting, AGM, as a relatively ordinary member and was disappointed to subsequently discover there were these various issues going on and, possibly like the Deputy, I had not been told about them at the AGM. The board has committed to openness and transparency. Since the board was formed in March, we have issued two individual updates on all these affairs, insofar as we can, to each member of the organisation. We are committed to that. As part of our consultation process, we are meeting with members through various forums where we are open to questions, which will be answered. We are doing our best in that regard.

On the area of leisure cycling, safety and all that, we are in somewhat of a transition stage. Ms Kerrane will address that. To give an illustration from my experience of where we are, as a club secretary in Killarney I was heavily involved in submitting observations on cycling development and all that but I felt slightly uncomfortable about doing so because there was a question in respect of whether that is the role of a cycling club. The club did not do that kind of thing historically and there is nothing in our rules or constitution stating it is our role. We did it anyway. We were working with people from cyclist.ie, who are very professional at this type of thing, and there was a question in respect of what our role was in all this, as compared with their role. Cycling Ireland is in a similar state of transition in terms of discussing where we lie at a policy level in this area and where we should lie relative to the other organisations. I will hand over to Ms Kerrane to provide details of that.