Treacy warns of sport budget cuts consequences

JOHN TREACY has warned high-performance programmes will have to be dismantled and jobs lost if the current government continues the trend of its predecessors by shaving the budget for sport.

The chief executive of the Irish Sports Council (ISC) was speaking yesterday just two days after senior figures in a number of national governing bodies expressed fears that public funds will be slashed in 2013 after the London Olympic Games.

Liam Harbison, chief executive of Paralympic Ireland, was among those at an Olympic forum in Dublin who voiced concerns.

Last year, the ISC was afforded €46m from the public purse which was distributed among national governing bodies, high-performance athletes and Local Sports Partnerships (LSPs) but that figure is already down 15% from its height three years earlier.

The sports fraternity has come together under the ‘Irish Sport Matters’ banner for two years in a successful attempt to ward off the worst cuts but some bodies are already operating programmes with less than the required funds.

“Sport is continuing to deliver,” said Treacy at the third annual Irish Sports Monitor report. “We have done reasonably well but if we have further reductions we will be at the dismantling stage and we need to make sure that we are not dismantling anything.

“We are getting to a point now where we would be looking at people going from around the governing bodies. LSPs as well, we have cut them down to a minimum, and we will be fighting the best case we can to keep it at the level it is at.”

Those words were echoed by Michael Ring, Minister of State for Tourism and Sport, who admitted that some government departments did not consider sport to be an important consideration at a time when areas like health are struggling.

However, Treacy unleashed figures to buttress the case for sport, including research from Canada which claimed that the equivalent of €3 is saved on a government’s health spend for every euro committed to sport and recreation.

“What we have to do is continue to make our point,” he added. “What we have seen over the last while is that the tide has risen in terms of participation levels and on the high-performance side and you need sustained investment over a long period of time in high-performance.”

Treacy pointed to Rory McIlroy as an example of what has been achieved in Irish sport with the help of government assistance: McIlroy came through the Golf Union of Ireland’s high-performance programme before turning professional.

McIlroy’s success in winning the US Open was just one noteworthy achievement by Irish sportspeople in June with others including the two gold medals won at the European Senior Boxing Championships and Conor Niland’s appearance at Wimbledon.

A successful Olympic Games in London would be a major boost to the efforts to stave off the worst of any planned cuts, as almost 15 years of government funding up until now would be put at risk if funds were severed for even one or two years.

“It takes a sustained investment over a long period of time to produce athletes and the bottom line is this: you don’t want to be going back into places like the Aviva Stadium and not being able to perform, as we have been able to do,” said Treacy.

“When the spirit of the nation needs to be lifted where do we go? The one place that we go all of the time is to sport. If we don’t continue to invest in, say, our rugby development programmes with the IRFU then you won’t have the talent coming through.

“You won’t have the Munsters or Leinsters coming through.”

Government funding is equally important for sport and recreation at grass roots and everyday levels and there was good news on that front yesterday with the latest Irish Sports Monitor report recording increased participation levels across the country.