Govt announces €2.5m cut in Irish Sports Council funding

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.

The Council’s budget was reduced to €44.5m for 2012 from €47m in 2011.

The Minister of State for Sport Michael Ring announced a total package of €25.58m to invest in more than 100 sports organisations for 2012.

Of this, the GAA, FAI and IRFU saw their budgets cut by 10% to €8.27m to support their participation programmes, with 5% cuts for the bigger governing bodies and 2.5% for the small sports.

The 31 Local Sport partnerships (LSP) will see a reduction of around 7% to €5.38m in their annual grants.

There will also be a reduction to just over €1m in the Women in Sport programme based on the recommendations of a review into the programmes. The review’s outcomes emphasised targeting the individual sports that made the greatest impact and where National Governing Bodies (NGB) and LSPs have worked together to increase participation among women.

The main spending areas for the €44.5m funding are NGB core grants (25%) approximately, Local Sports Partnerships (12%), Youth Field Sport (18%), High Performance (24%) and other Council programmes (10%).

The council operating costs, including salaries, comes in around 7% of total budget.

Mr Ring said: "This grant funding is a strong indication of this Government’s commitment to sport. I want to pay tribute to all of the sports organisations; they are continuing to do outstanding work for sport in Ireland and are playing a very important role in delivering opportunities in sport both nationally and for local communities throughout the country."

Kieran Mulvey, Chairman of the Irish Sports Council said: "The council has taken great care in allocating money to ensure that the most vulnerable sports bear the least impact in 2012.

The priority this year was high performance because everyone wants to see our athletes do well in London."

They also published their Statement of Strategy for the years 2012 to 2014 which is to concentrate on developing the governing body sector and sustaining the high performance system.

John Treacy Chief Executive of the Council said: "We were happy to report excellent progress on all areas of work over the past three years and we have set out our priorities for the next three years. The council received very positive feedback from the sports sector on our work. The excellent working relationships in the sector is something that we can all be proud of."