There was a collective buzzing of smartphones at the Irish Times Sportswoman of the Year lunch on Friday as news broke of the Government releasing an additional €925,000 to National Governing Bodies of Sport to assist preparations for the Rio Olympic and Paralympic Games.
This is in addition to a €1 million boost for the same purpose announced last year and will be steered towards training camps, preparatory trips and other practical supports to enable Irish athletes do as well as they can at the games.
“The Government is providing increased funding of €3m to Sport Ireland for 2016,” said Minister Ring in hi statement announcing the additional funds.
“I am pleased to say that within this, an amount of €925,000 is being invested specifically to assist sporting bodies in their preparations for the Rio Games.”
“Through this investment, Sport Ireland will support specific plans by NGBs for the Rio Games. I am delighted to make this additional investment available in 2016, on top of a special €1m allocation that was provided last year to assist NGBs in their Rio preparations.”
“2016 is a very important year for Irish athletes and high performance NGBs and I wish them all well as their preparations intensify in the run-up to the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games.”
The Minister also said that he had discussions with Sport Ireland last week on their budgetary preparations for next year and confirmed that funding for NGBs will be maintained in 2016. It is unclear if this is a restating of the original Budget announcement made in October or if it is a commitment that the funding for sport to be announced in the October 2016 budget has been in some way ring fenced.
It will naturally be a big year for sporting politics and Sport for Business will be closely following the promises and manifesto statements of each of the leading political parties in this area over the course of the coming months.
This Government has produced strong financial support for sport through difficult times. Current spending has fallen since its peak before the crest of the economic cycle but three rounds of Capital Grant money as well as a bouncing back of current spending and special allocations such as this have left sport in reasonable financial shape.
They have set a bar and if anyone is to look for a sporting vote that’s what they will have to aim to beat.
