Ring raises hope Government may ease back on budget cuts

Hopes were raised yesterday that the Government may be willing to trim the worst excesses off the savage 8% cut applied to spending on sport announced in last week’s Budget.

Junior Minister Michael Ring insisted both he and Sport Minister Leo Varadkar are “determined to mitigate the impact of this measure.”

He added that further funding may yet be allocated from other “uses”.

More than €3m was shaved off the current spend for sport, reducing the figure to approximately €40m but the department then chose to focus on the bump in resources for capital projects, and did so again yesterday.

Department officials are known to have been taken aback by the negative reaction to their level of commitment to the sports sector last week.

“I want to make it clear funding for sport increased by €18.9m in Budget 2014, from €74.6m to €93.5m,” claimed Ring.

“This is the first increase since the economic crash of 2008. This 25% increase in sports funding means we can press ahead with a new round of the Sports Capital Programme, just one year after we advertised the last programme. It also means work can start on the new National Indoor Sports Arena, the missing piece of sporting infrastructure in the National Sports Campus. This arena is the centrepiece of the campus and has long been sought by all the sporting bodies.”