Good, but could do better. If Ireland’s performance at last year’s Olympic Games were a report card it would read as exactly that.

Double Olympic champion Mo Farah missed two drugs tests in the build up to the 2012 Games, it has been reported.

Ireland’s elite amateur boxers are to be catered for in a state-of-the-art training facility in the National Sports Campus.

IT’S 20 years since this column sat down to complete the Leaving Cert – for a second, excruciating time – but it is probably some sort of twisted pseudo-tribute to that daunting time in all our lives that scraps of the information we had to learn by rote occasionally jostle their way back to the forefront of the mind when least expected, writes Brendan O’Brien.

Ah, Rio.

Never mind the Republic of Ireland’s loss in Cologne, or Munster’s woeful experience in Edinburgh, Irish sport’s most damaging defeat is about to be recorded today, and in Leinster House, of all places.

The Irish Sports Council's budget has been decreased for 2012, with all sectors of sport suffering reductions except the High Performance budget, which supports Ireland's Olympic athletes, whose funding was left at €10.5m.

AS examples of naked political opportunism go, few can match Charlie Haughey’s decision to call for the government’s private jet 24 years ago and make a dramatic dash for Paris.

THE CHAIRMAN of the Irish Sports Council, Kieran Mulvey, has called on the incoming government to give sport a permanent departmental home, rather than moving it from station to station with each cabinet re-shuffle.

ALL the political parties scrambling to be part of the next government are being asked to guarantee that a percentage of National Lottery funding will be set aside for the use of the Irish Sports Council (ISC).

A CALL to curb the powers of the Irish Sports Council (ISC) was met with broad support by public representatives from across the political spectrum at Leinster House yesterday.

THE country’s sports sector suffered a considerable cut amounting to €23.5 million in yesterday’s budget, well over a fifth of it’s entire worth in 2010.

THE unresolved problems within Irish athletics will take on a new dimension when the Irish Sports Council grants to the National Governing Bodies are announced this week.

THE future of the GAA inter-county player grants scheme looks increasingly uncertain with confirmation yesterday that it will not be included in the government’s 2009 grant package for sport due to be announced next week.

GARETH TURNBULL won’t be out of pocket as a result of the lengthy battle to clear his name after testing positive for a banned substance in 2005, the Irish Sports Council confirmed yesterday.

Ireland’s top athletes received a boost in their bid for glory at World and European level today through a €7m funding package.

Brendan O’Brien

THE IRISH Sports Council yesterday announced grants of €6.29 million for 53 organisations.

IN 1999 the Irish Sports Council established an anti-doping programme amid a good deal of fanfare. Now it seems to be living up to the hype.

IRELAND could have its smallest team in years at next year’s Olympic Games in Athens as the race for qualification gathers momentum.

THE Irish Sports Council is continuing to expand it’s anti-doping programme and, while the number of positive tests recorded last year were down in line with international statistics, sports bodies were advised yesterday to be vigilant.

John Treacy, chief executive of the Sports Council, has said Richard Burrows’ challenge to Pat Hickey for the Olympic Council of Ireland presidency is healthy for Irish sport.