The Irish Sports Council has published a review into the future of the programme whereby direct grant payments are made to high performance athletes. The Scheme accounts for about 25% of the Council’s investment in high performance sport.
Next year’s budget is likely to be reduced again in December’s budget, in line with public spending cuts across the board.  In 2012 the cuts were not applied to high performance because of the focus on the Olympics.  There is expected to be an adjustment in this area for 2013.
Additional pressure will arise from the success of the Paralympics team which means that no fewer than 13 athletes will now be on the highest level of support (currently €40,000), rising from only six 12 months ago.
The biggest change is that after a transition period the money will be administered directly by the individual sport’s governing bodies.
This has the potential to give rise to a more fractious relationship between administrators and athletes replacing the previous ability to both rail against the perceived iniquities of the Sports Council.
It will though prompt greater individual sport ownership of high performance identification, development and delivery at the level closest to the potential medallists themselves.
Five sports that do not have supported performance plans have already been told they will not qualify for athlete support and any contribution to individuals will have to be made from their core grant or from external sources and commercial sponsorships.  These sports are archery, fencing, table tennis, taekwondo and gymnastics.
A full series of post-Olympic and Paralympic debriefs within each sport are currently underway and the focus for the next cycle to Rio 2016 will be on developing high quality, multi-annual performance plans. Criteria based assessments will be used to measure the medal potential of each sport, and this will directly impact the financial contribution received from state funding.
This will create a virtuous as well as a vicious circle for individual sports whose future prospects will be dependent on finance via the performance of the elite athletes they are developing and bringing through.
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