Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 13 July 2022

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media

Governance and Related Issues in Cycling Ireland: Discussion

Mr. Paul McDermott:

No. Where we are at the moment is that there is a gap. The first thing we have to acknowledge is that the boxers, coaches and service personnel are of the highest standard. I am sure people will accept the Irish high-performance boxing programme is globally recognised, but it is a performance director-led model. We would like Bernard Dunne to still be in post. He is not, unfortunately. We would certainly welcome him back. I am not sure about anybody else. If it is not Bernard we need somebody else in post soon. It is one of the priority lines we are going to try to agree with the IABA and one of the points of urgency with it. As the various contributors said, there is an urgency here to get the IABA back and functioning to a high level. I pay tribute to the coaches, including Zaur Antia, John Conlon, Dmitrij Dmitruk and the others. They have done a fantastic job but they are only filling in a gap. Just to acknowledge, for example, Zaur Antia. He travelled from one major championship to another. He is obviously a highly-regarded professional but that is a lot to ask of a person. We want this to be resolved sooner rather than later because there is a gap and you cannot expect this of the people - they also lost their operations manager and other staff. Those gaps have got to be filled sooner rather than later.

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