Treacy rules out ‘savage’ grant cuts
The grants are due to be announced tomorrow but without the customary fanfare which is indicative of the current financial climate and possibly the impending cuts in allocations.
John Treacy, chief executive of the Irish Sports Council, admitted yesterday that there would be cuts but ruled out the “savage cuts” that had been predicted.
“There will be some adjustments but no massive cuts,” he said. “We will be cutting back but we will be trying to spread the pain a bit and — like all the programmes we are running — there are very good cases for all the sports in terms of their contribution to the sporting infrastructure of the country.
“We have spoken to the individual sports and they know there is a little bit of pain coming but a critical piece going forward is that we need to make sure that we continue to invest in the High Performance side if we want to get results in London in four years time.
There will be a blank space after “Athletics” as the row over appointments to critical positions continues within that particular sport.
“We are negotiating with AAI at the moment and there are some critical issues that need to be sorted out,” Treacy said. “We’ll be sitting down with them very shortly to discuss their grant for the year and we will be working with them.
“There are a few pieces we need to clarify with them and we hope to have them clarified fairly shortly.
“There are critical positions that need to be filled and it’s all about making sure that you get top quality people in the right positions.
“We will work with them to make sure that the progress that has been made over the past few years does not slip.”
Athletics, as one of the handful of Irish sports that have medalled at the Olympic Games, was included among what were described as “focus sports” at the publication of the Beijing Review yesterday.
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