John O'Mahony (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As spokesperson on sport, I raise the farcical situation that has come to light in recent days in regard to the Irish Amateur Boxing Association.One could not make up what has happened and what is emerging. There are two different boards, each saying it is in charge. A team has been picked by a high performance director who has not been sanctioned by the committee. There are people not turning up at meetings with Sport Ireland and the Minister, which were arranged to try to resolve the situation. This did not start today or yesterday. When I was chairman of the committee on sport, we had the Irish Amateur Boxing Association in before us explaining why it lost one of the best coaches and high-performance people in the world. Is this now going to happen again? Boxers who had failed drug tests were allowed to travel to Rio. The coaches did not even know about it and were only informed as the draw was being made in Rio. It is simply not good enough. The boxers are the innocent people involved here. I understand that more than €700,000 has been allocated this year for the high-performance unit. We had a report and recommendations in respect of Rio. We were told they were going to implemented but that does not seem to have happened.

I ask the Leader to ask the Minister of State with responsibility for sport, Deputy O'Donovan, to come in here next week and explain exactly what is happening. There is a great contrast between this trouble and the joyous scenes in Skibbereen following the rowing. Anybody involved in sport would want to have one body with everybody singing from the same hymn sheet, working together and achieving success. In this case, however, we have a dysfunctional family that agrees on nothing, leading to a farcical situation which needs to be resolved once and for all.