A breakdown of the financial support given to each of the three main field sports was carried in the Sunday Times newspaper yesterday on foot of a Freedom of information request submitted by the paper.

It confirmed the absolute amounts sought and secured by the IRFU, GAA and FAI, together with details of some of the support material which each of the sporting bodies had put forward in support of their claims.

The num ers revealed showed that the GAA had secured €30.8 million from a request for €44 million, that rugby had secured €18 million from a request for €20 million and that the FAI received €13 million from a request of €20 million.

In support of stressing the urgent need for financial support to mitigate the impacts of Covid on the financial health of the sporting bodies, they were asked to outline the worst-case scenario for each.

Despite going into the pandemic with strong reserves, the IRFU indicated that it would be heading towards insolvency by the third quarter of 2021 without support.

Were the GAA to have run last year’s All Ireland Championships without support from the Government, they forecast that County and Provincial units could have been facing insolvency even earlier.

The cost of staging the Championships was originally put at €19.5 million but this was reduced to €17 million by reducing the value of venue rentals, as well as placing caps on the number of players in a squad to reduce the cost of training teams, and meal and travel allowances.

There was an individual cost as well with the GAA reducing the salary of 500 staff by up to 30 per cent, and the IRFU imposing redundancies as well as salary reductions of up to 20 per cent on staff.

The pain was clearly being felt across the sporting environment and the overall Government support package of €85 million was a vital part in saving some of our best-known sporting institutions from going under.

The financial hit from 2021 is likely to be as heavy but at least we can see some potential light on the horizon now with the vaccination programme rolling out and a hope that fans might be back in grounds as early as the summer months.

This was a good piece of journalism from Mark Tighe and the full story can be read (behind a paywall) can be read here.

 

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