The Irish Sports Council announced its central spending plans yesterday and for the most part it was steady as she goes.
Overall budgets for the 59 National Governing Bodies will remain broadly in line with last year though that was a big fall on the previous Olympic year and Sports Council Chairman Kieran Mulvey spoke yesterday of this being a floor level for the funding of Irish sport.
The figure the NGB’s will have to spend is actually up a small percentage at €10.64 million as opposed to €10.53 million. Most will have taken a small decrease with the bulk of the difference made up i the shape of a special €200,000 grant to Special Olympics Ireland for hosting the Special Olympic Ireland Games in Limerick in June. This is a four year cycle and will be one of the biggest sports events to take place in the country this year.
Squash, Raquetball, Surfing and Ten Pin Bowling were the four sports to actually score an increase in their core funding for the next twelve months.
€583,000 has been dedicated specifically to initiatives promoting the involvement of Women in Sport, again broadly in line with last year’s funding and the same applies to money for the local sports partnerships around the country who have played a key role in increasing participation numbers.
The Government has also made over €40 million available this year by way of a capital grants scheme, the application process for which is underway at present.
With participation numbers rising and a record 67 medals achieved in high performance competition last year the money that is available is clearly being put to good use but there will be a continual struggle between the different groups seeking funding from the public purse.
Our view is that the metrics of measuring success need to change from feet on the street towards a longer term perspective on the health of the nation. Of course one leads to the other but yesterday’s story about a cycling manifesto in Britain that if replicated here could lead to healthy savings per annum of €30 million paint a more compelling picture of the health, social and economic benefit of sport to the nation.
In context that saving would be more than all the NGB spending, all the Women in Sport spending, all the Local Sports Partnership spending and all the high performance spending that was announced yesterday for 2014.
The challenge is that the saving comes after the investment and beyond the scope of a single government life span. Bold thinking and brave action is needed on the part of the political establishment to effect real change, in the knowledge that they may only reap the reputation reward as a legacy rather than a card to play at local or national elections.
We will look in more detail at the Sports Council funding strategy over the coming days.
