Swim chiefs buoyant as ISC announces grants
High performance funding will be announced after the Athens Review is completed later this month.
Activities covered by the grants include administration, the employment of professional staff, development and planning.
“We enjoy an excellent working relationship with all the sports bodies. The consistent financial and other supports we offer the National Governing Bodies (NGBs) is reaping rewards for the organisations and is delivering benefits to the wider sports community,” Irish Sports Council chief executive John Treacy said.
Sixteen ‘focus sports’ are seen as having the potential for success at elite international level, and those will have a separate investment based on high performance plans.
One of those sports is swimming, and Swim Ireland’s Clare Mulholland was delighted with the €375,750 grant for her organisation following a troubled year.
“It’s obviously a good sign the Sports Council have renewed their confidence in our organisation.”
The grant for Swim Ireland specifically supports the appointment of a director of education, which Mulholland welcomes.
“Our national coach, Ger Doyle, has taken on huge responsibilities in organising camps for swimmers. He’ll look forward to having a full-time professional to work with.
“The director of education will be involved in organising the education of teachers and coaches, as well as setting up coaching seminars - helping the continuous professional development of those who teach swimming.
“The director of swimming is another crucial job. While a national coach works in a hands-on way, a director of swimming would pull things together nationally - he or she would look at the regional set-up and look at facilities. He or she would devise national programmes and be an overall strategist. When we appoint a director of swimming we’ll really see swimming go from strength to strength.”
The Athletics Association of Ireland grant is significantly lower than last year - from €570,450 to €340,547 - but that body is implementing large-scale changes, such as appointing a new chief executive, and when that appointment is made its funding allocation will be reviewed.
Pierce O’Callaghan of the AAI said the grant was “along the lines we expected. The Sports Council have always been supportive of athletics and we’ve always had a good dialogue with them. It’s in our own best interests to put a chief executive in place so we can move the change process forward.
“That process means turning the whole sport upside down, basically. We’re working on a radical plan to bring athletics forward and our executive committee has been meeting once a week over the winter on that. We then have to sell that plan to the grassroots of the sport, so to that end we’ll be calling an EGM. At present we can’t appoint a chief executive because it’s unconstitutional according to the rules of our organisation, so changing our constitution is another job.”
O’Callaghan said Swim Ireland’s success was a good model for other sports trying to modernise.
“They’ve done a lot of soul-searching and we take great heart from how well they’ve done.”
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