Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The reason I referred to Sport Ireland is that all the money we give to boxing goes through Sport Ireland. That is probably the answer I am giving here today. We are very supportive of these initiatives and there may be other avenues of support available to the project, indeed, directly through the IABA, which gets more than €500,000 in direct funding from us every year. I do not know, but there may well be funding available from the Department of Foreign Affairs or the local authorities in the area. I urge the Deputy to look at that.

If he does not mind, I will take just a few seconds just to talk about boxing. We are very happy with the governance changes have taken place in the IABA. However, I have to say our boxers and our boxing association are facing unprecedented challenges navigating the geopolitical scene at the moment, particularly in relation to the International Boxing Association. I wish to let the boxing community know that yesterday I met two of the directors of the World Boxing Association, WBA. We working very hard, as a Government, to give it support to ensure that our boxers have all of the avenues all around the world available to them to participate at the highest competitive levels, which is really important. We are working really hard with the WBA and the Olympic movement to make sure that boxing remains an Olympic sport into the future, because as people will know, that position is seriously threatened at the moment by what is going on at a global level.

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