“There is no room for ambiguity or for one sport being treated any different to any other.” Minster of Sate for Sport Patrick O’Donovan is always refreshing in that he calls things as he sees them without the filter that sometimes is layered over political speeches.
Yesterday at the Federation of Irish Sport Annual Conference at the Aviva Stadium a gathering of CEO’s from within Ireland’s sporting fraternity heard the Minister pull no punches when it came to discussion over governance in general and the storm gathering around the Irish Amateur Boxing Association in particular.
He left after delivering his speech and was doubtless keeping appraised as moves behind the scenes involving Fergal Carruth from Boxing and Sport Ireland CEO John Treacy, both of whom were present at the event, continued.
The reality is that if Boxing cannot put the final touches on a change to its governance in the coming weeks, it’s funding from Sport Ireland, who determine the final distribution of the Government’s annual grant to sport will be withdrawn.
There are conflicting stories over whether the division within boxing can be resolved and whether the current executive and board have the numbers and the will to push through the changes which will remove some of the control exerted by ‘suits’ over the selection of teams and the high performance programme in particular.
Things had looked to be going well with a strategy review undertaken before Christmas and the appointment of Bernard Dunne as High Performance Manager.
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Those were adopted by the whole council but the pace of change was being resisted and a group of members of the Board have now seemingly set themselves up as an alternative power base.
That is not going to be acceptable to Minister O’Donovan and the Government. They do not have statutory power over the sport but the indications yesterday were that Sport Ireland will be ‘advised’ to act in a manner that gives full power to best practice in areas of governance and funding.
Later in the day we heard stories from Cricket Ireland CEO Warren Deutrom of 200 million viewers of last month’s tri-nations series in Dublin featuring Bangladesh and new Zealand and Ireland’s march towards full test status.
We heard of the progress of Gymnastics moving from 5,000 members to 25,000 ambassadors and relying on state money for only 24% of its revenues now.
We heard of the ambitious plans of the Irish Sailing Federation to raise between one and two million per annum from philanthropic giving and from Sara Liebscher of Notre Dame University on how they set about fundraising with an ambition, a process and a keen sense of why they are asking and why donors will give.
It was an afternoon of positive momentum, added to by the Minister who restated his desire and the increasing likelihood of multi annual funding for sport.
It’s just a shame that the words which stuck in most minds were those of the threat of penalties rather than the benefits of a high functioning sports community.
