The second phase of Irish Sports Council funding for 2014 was unveiled on Friday with news of the individual grants that will be paid to those at the top end of individual sports who are to be supported.
A total of 85 athletes across 15 sports are to receive either Podium grants of €40,000, World Class grants of €20,000 or international grants of €12,000.
The total sum to be spent on the grants is down from €1.7 million to €1.6 million for the year ahead. There was disappointment expressed by some that Ciaran O’Lionáird and Derval O’Rourke, who both achieved Podium finishes at the European Indoor Championships last year will only receive €12,000 over the next 12 months.
Nine Olympic and nine Paralympic athletes are on the top level of funding with Boxing heading the list with five scoring the maximum amount. They include Katie Taylor, Paddy Barnes, Joe Ward and Jason Quigley though Adam Nolan has dropped off the funding list having been given a €20,000 World Class grant last year.
This is the first year that responsibility for the grant scheme has been given over to individual sports with Athletics, Sailing and Swimming the first three to meet the required Governance standards to be granted some degree of autonomy.
Grants are always a sensitive subject, particularly when the level of achievement to justify them rarely ends in the kind of Olympic Gold that might be seen by some observers as the only reward to justify funding.
Sport for Business has spoken to a number of athletes on the sharp end of funding and for them it is more a question of structures and welfare than the hard cash which is always burned up quickly by medical bills and travel expenses.
When public money is spent by way of grants there is always going to be a high level of scrutiny needed, and transparency in how the money is distributed. Given issues in the charity sector that is more important now than ever before.
Agreeing and advising of the grant an athlete will get for 2014 in the second half of the second month of that year is less than ideal and the way in which we spend money on sport, as well as the value for broader society which we expect in return will always be a contentious subject.
Just because it is though does not mean it should be done and then forgotten until the next time.
Creating the right environment where sport is seen as a vital part of who and what we are as a nation can never just be left to sit there.
Government funding is an important, though by no means the only element to the debate.
Ways in which athletes are taxed, or treated financially within the system can be looked at and programmes to involve companies in ways that wil benefit them as well as the wellbeing of the country’s citizens young and old all need to be part of the mix.
