Mr. John Treacy:

In recent times, with a reducing budget, the Minister would have asked the council to prioritise the funding for the smaller sports, and we have done that. The council has a budget that it allocates to the NGB sector. We would basically prepare evaluations for the sub-committee of the council that evaluates the grants for those smaller NGBs. We would be looking at what they achieved the previous year, what their targets for that year are, what their strategy is, what organisational capacity they have and where their boards are. We would look at all of those things and those recommendations would then go to the board of the Irish Sports Council. The smaller NGBs would then come back to us with a mid-year report where they would outline to us what they have achieved in the first six months and the progress they are making. If they are falling behind with their progress, they would outline that to us as well. As part of that, before they would get the second moiety of funding from us, they would send in their financial accounts to us and these would be signed off by auditors. If the sums are over €200,000, they would have to state that the money is expended for the purposes for which it was given, so we are very clear around that as well. That process would go on. When we have our financial accounts signed off by the AGMs of these bodies, we would then release the second moiety.

What we also do as part of the process is to carry out audits with those governing bodies of sport. We would carry out up to five audits a year with those smaller NGBs. As part of that, our auditors would go in and would probably look at two areas in particular - corporate governance and the financial procedures that are in place. They would then come back with a series of recommendations. For the most part, the audits are fine but, occasionally, they will come back with recommendations. If there are significant recommendations, the council would set up a liaison process with those governing bodies of sport. A council member, an executive member and I would normally be part of that. When we have our recommendations, we would ask the NGB to come back with how it is going to implement the recommendations. We would work through those with the NGB during the course of a year. When we are satisfied it has worked through all the recommendations of its audit, we would cease the liaison process. That is the process.

Occasionally, if we hear some, I suppose, noise in the system, and we occasionally do hear noise in the system, we would send in the auditors to take a look at what is going on. That would sometimes reveal things and we would then set up a liaison process to work through some of those issues.