Apologies have been received from Deputy Brian Brennan.

Today's meeting has been split into two sessions and has been convened to continue the committee's scrutiny of matters relating to Sport Ireland's role in engagement by non-governing bodies, NGBs, and supports for minority sports. This is, for now, our final meeting on this topic.

I welcome the following witnesses: from the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, Mr. Cian Ó Lionáin, assistant secretary for sport, and Mr. Ciarán Shanley, principal officer, sports policy; and from Sport Ireland, Dr. Úna May, CEO, Mr. Paul McDermott, director for high-performance and national governing bodies, and Mr. Liam Harbison, director of the Sport Ireland Institute.

The format of this meeting is usually such that I would invite witnesses to deliver an opening statement, but we will actually dispense with that because we only have an hour and will take the statements as read. Instead, we will have questions from committee members. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Before we move to today's discussion, I would like to clarify some limitations in relation to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references witnesses make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege in respect of the presentations they make to this committee. This means that they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege, and it is my duty as Chair to ensure that this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed by me to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

We will commence questions.

I welcome the guests and thank them for their statements.

The Department has given the committee two updated statements, so three in total, with the last one arriving two hours ago, which is quite late. What is the difference in the updated statements? Why the change?

The Senator has four minutes.

Yes, and I ask the officials to give brief answers, if they can. Have the Department officials seen the statements by Sports Ireland previous to this meeting?

Very simply, the reason for the updated statements is we had two typos, which we spotted - just a wrong year and a wrong number. Yes, I saw a copy of Sport Ireland's statement this morning.

Has any change been made to the Department's statement based on what Mr. Ó Lionáin saw in Sports Ireland's statement?

No.

My next questions are for Sport Ireland. I was on its website this morning and looked at its annual reports. It has not published its 2024 annual report. When is that due to be published?

We generally publish it around the middle of the year. We have to go through the annual financial statements, which have to be approved before we can publish the annual report. It will probably be-----

That is the middle of the year in the following year.

Yes, that is the norm.

We are in 2026.

It is a year and a half later. The Comptroller and Auditor General has to review all the financial statements before we can publish the annual report.

When was the 2023 statement published? Does Dr. May know the date?

It would have been around June. That is normally when we get it out.

It has been a month since we had the meeting on Rowing Ireland. Can Dr. May give us a brief update on what Sport Ireland has done in the past four weeks regarding Rowing Ireland and the issues raised at that meeting?

From Sport Ireland's point of view, we have been reviewing the issues very closely and have looked to see what the organisation could do and what actions it could take to strengthen our position and governance in this area. We had a board meeting yesterday, which approved a new, revised-----

Has Sport Ireland met with Rowing Ireland and the high performance director or any key people since our meeting?

I will defer to Mr. McDermott, who will have met with Rowing Ireland several times since then, and Mr. Harbison.

I have not had a formal sit-down. I have been talking on the telephone with the interim CEO and performance director about the current status of the welfare culture in the high performance programme based in Cork and updating them on our own updated athlete welfare policy. We had a session with various CEOs at the Sport Ireland Institute ten days ago, where we updated people on what our plans were in the medium term around athlete welfare.

We are very short on time. Did anyone highlight to Sport Ireland the differing attitudes towards high performance sport and that Sport Ireland was not aligned with Rowing Ireland, which was very much focused on winning at all costs? Was that ever highlighted to Sport Ireland?

I am not entirely sure what exactly the question being asked is. Sport Ireland was aware there were differences of opinion around the methodological approach to the high performance programme in rowing. We were aware of that.

Why did Sport Ireland not intervene?

We have a very long and detailed list-----

When was that highlighted?

There have been different levels of this. We were aware in the early stages of the programme. Liam Harbison is here to represent the Sport Ireland Institute, which is the high performance support service. The service providers were aware of differences of opinion around how best to run the programme, and we would have dealt with it through the Institute service providers. In 2021, we received a formal escalation of the issue.

Why did Sport Ireland not intervene like it would have done in other organisations, such as cycling or pentathlon which had interim CEOs? Why was that not done with Rowing Ireland?

In which period?

In the period since Sport Ireland was made aware of the issues with Rowing Ireland and its mentality of winning at all costs as opposed to the welfare of the athletes.

There has been constant communication between Sport Ireland and Rowing Ireland over a period at different levels.

The athletes would not feel there was anything concrete done.

It is difficult for me to say what an athlete has perceived, but we have had a lot of correspondence and communication.

Yes, but it is fairly obvious that athletes feel they have been let down by Rowing Ireland and Sport Ireland.

We cannot put words in their mouths, but we are aware-----

You can believe them.

-----of what communication has arisen between Sport Ireland and Rowing Ireland. We had extensive communication between-----

Does Dr. May believe the athletes' concerns? Does she believe they feel they have been let down?

I absolutely acknowledge that there are athletes who feel they were unhappy and uncomfortable with the system as it was. I am also comfortable in the knowledge that there were athletes who were disaffected through the programme they were involved with.

Does Dr. May recognise that athletes feel that while Sport Ireland intervened in other sports, it did not intervene in Rowing Ireland?

The challenge Sport Ireland has is that our modus operandi is generally to work closely with the governing bodies. We do not necessarily publicise to everybody involved exactly what actions have been taken, but we have been working and liaising closely.

When you appoint an interim CEO in another organisation, that is obviously known and is public.

That is the last question.

I am sorry, but I am not aware of which sport the Senator is referring to.

Cycling.

If a CEO leaves a sport, we will provide support to ensure there is a CEO in place at the time.

I thank all the witnesses for attending. They are all very welcome.

I want to discuss initially, both with Sport Ireland and the Department, the statutory role of Sport Ireland and its engagement with the NGBs. There are 60-odd NGBs and 31 sports partnerships. What formal structure is in place for engagement with each of those organisations? Based on the Department's notes, it comes across as a little ad hoc. There are regular meetings. Is there a set structure for formal meetings, where they sit down once a month or every three months or six months? What way does that work? We will go to the Department first and then Sport Ireland.

From the Department's perspective, Sport Ireland is the development agency, so that is where the real, structured engagement takes place. Our Ministers and the Department take meetings on request with NGBs. In any given year, Ministers and officials could meet with between ten and 30 NGBs.

There is not a set number of meetings. They take place on request.

No, there is not. However, there is set and regular engagement with Sport Ireland, where we then get the read-out.

From Sport Ireland's perspective, does it have a regular set schedule with each NGB?

No, we do not have a regular set schedule. We engage with the NGBs on a consistent and regular basis. Engagement tends to be focused on challenges and issues they are encountering.

I know there is significant engagement, but would it not make sense to have a formal structure? Sport Ireland has a responsibility for these NGBs. Would a formal structure not be important?

As I said, there are 60 national governing bodies and we provide a lot of supports to them, including governance and training supports.

As the overarching organisation and provider of funding, Sport Ireland does not have a formal arrangement in place. If I am an employer with 60 employees, I will sit down with my staff every three months or six months to have a formal one-to-one meeting to see how things are going and what issues there are. Does Sport Ireland not have any formal arrangement in place with any of the NGBs?

No, we tend to deal with issues as they arise. We have very close engagement. There are different needs and different-----

I understand that, but does Dr. May not think it would be good practice to have that structure in place?

It is certainly something we could consider, but we deal with all the NGBs as needs arise. They are very different. There are three different types.

That is the challenge. Sport Ireland is dealing with issues as they arise, as opposed to being proactive and pre-empting what might come up.

We have an audit system whereby we carry out audits in the governing bodies, and that is on a routine, rotating basis.

To ensure best practice going forward, Sport Ireland should consider having a formal set-up for engagement.

Rowing Ireland was mentioned. I know Sport Ireland has had various engagements as regards safeguarding of minors, athlete welfare, governance, etc. Is Sport Ireland aware of any outstanding issues in any of the organisations? We know there are issues with Rowing Ireland, but are there any outstanding issues in any of the other 60 organisations?

There are a number of issues being dealt with in the structures of sport. We carried out a survey at the request of the committee and we were advised of a number of issues. At all times, we deem there to be issues in all-----

Let us take athlete welfare as an example. We are familiar with Rowing Ireland. What other sporting organisations have issues regarding athlete welfare?

There are issues that have been raised, and there are different definitions and descriptions of what they consider to be athlete welfare issues. At all times, we have multiple governing bodies providing us with information about general issues. Sometimes, those issues are more serious than others, and we engage on them.

What organisations have serious issues outstanding?

It came across in the survey responses, when we asked 21 high performance sports, that there are two issues going through two separate governing bodies, which are in their formal complaints disciplinary-----

Which governing bodies are they?

I do not know if it is for me to share that.

Mr. McDermott can share away.

I just want to know about the two organisations.

Are we happy to-----

I do not need individual names. If there are issues outstanding it is important for the committee to know.

We do not need any person’s name.

There is an issue in taekwondo and in rugby.

It is with taekwondo and rugby. Okay. I thank Mr. McDermott. That is my time up.

I thank the witnesses for coming back in a couple of weeks after they were already in. It is important to point out that from this committee's point of view, we are not trying to be negative about sport. We are all very involved in sport and appreciate the sporting landscape. I want to acknowledge Women in Sports week, an initiative by Sport Ireland, and the Her Moves campaign. They are really positive steps. That is one of the things to come out of Sport Ireland since the Sport Ireland Act 2015 was enacted. The whole landscape of sport has blossomed and is so much bigger now than what it was when the Act was written. I will talk a little bit about the constraints of the Act because we got into a little bit of that at the previous meeting in terms of not having investigative powers and being constrained by the legislation that is there.

We touched on safeguarding and athlete welfare in a previous session and focused on high performance. To come away from that for a time - and I know Dr. May has a really strong background in participation - when we talk about safeguarding in participation-level sport, which is obviously totally different from high-performance sport, how does Dr. May feel the system is working when an underage camogie or LGFA player or an adult sprinter comes to their club or NGB with an issue of safeguarding, whether it is verbal, mental or sexual abuse or whatever? I refer to some of the roadblocks there. The NGB will send them to Sport Ireland and Sport Ireland will send them back to the NGB. The NGB may send them to the children's ombudsman or An Garda Síochána. I have many cases and emails coming to me from people who are caught in limbo and are not sure where they will end up. They are running around in circles and being sent from Billy to Jack. How does Dr. May feel about the landscape? Is it working at the moment?

From Sport Ireland’s point of view, we are very proud of the fact that we are a development agency. Our intention and goal is to ensure we have a sector that is capable of managing sport. It is a growing and evolving area. Almost half the population is taking part in sport.

Specifically around complaints and safeguarding complaints of minors or adults, if that goes full circle and people are told to go from their NGB to Sport Ireland and back again, can Dr. May see how that would be frustrating because they do not have a reporting mechanism at participation level?

From our point of view, there are expectations on the governing bodies that they have complaint systems. However, unfortunately people are not satisfied with the complaint system. We have experience of people who are not satisfied with the outcomes and will come to Sport Ireland. We do not have the mechanisms to deal with individual issues and there are many issues across the board. As I said, half the population is taking part in sport at this point and 64% is engaged with sport.

That is my point; it has become so big. I wonder are we keeping a sufficient eye on it. That is my concern with the whole thing.

We have another session later and all of the opening statements for that session have come in. It is interesting to see some of the suggestions from our witnesses who will be here later. From the Federation of Irish Sport, there is mention of shared or centralised legal services and from Gymnastics Ireland something similar in terms of non-field of play areas around safe sport, integrity, discipline and complaints. From the CEO of Cricket Ireland, in relation to internationally safeguarding athlete welfare and other integrity matters, a suggestion that they might be looked at by independent integrity units. Is that something we could look at going forward? There would be an independent integrity unit that would deal with the likes of safeguarding, match fixing, anti-doping, corruption and that kind of thing. As Dr. May said, there are so many people involved in sport. How are we safeguarding all of them? It is really difficult to do. We have participation, high performance and all of these other areas of integrity. Would it be worth looking at that international model? It is in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the UK. That is the way the landscape is going. I would be interested to hear the thoughts of Dr. May on that and the Department as well.

From Sport Ireland’s point of view, we are very open to anything that will make participation opportunities and experience more positive. We are very willing to consider these things but we do believe Sport Ireland's role is to grow and develop the capacity of the sector in order that there is a sustainable sector that can provide opportunities for people to be involved in sport. We are open to the possibility. The Department will talk about the new national sports policy that should be considered in detail because it is a complex area, and although there are systems in other countries, in each and every country the approach is different. In some cases it is very restricted to only high-performance athletes who are in receipt of public funds. There are many elements. It is a complex area. We are very open to discussing it and happy to consider it as something that should be brought into the national sports policy consultation and discussion.

The Senator put her finger on it when she said the sports ecosystem is really different today than it was ten years ago. There are 20 months left on current national sports policy, so Ministers have just kick-started a process to review it. We are bringing together key stakeholders across the ecosystem to figure out what should be in the policy. The issues the Senator has raised are very legitimate and should be considered in the context of that. At this stage, the Ministers will not rule anything out or in. The key ambition is to have that new sports policy in place by quarter 3 of 2027. I got the year wrong in my statement and I am correcting that. That is absolutely valid and this input is very important to that.

I thank everyone for being here. I was keen to raise Ms O'Connor's suggestion around centralised legal services. It is helpful to hear that is something Sport Ireland might be open to. That opening statement mentioned - I know we are going to hear from the federation later - the issue around the Karshan ruling for the sports sector. Is that something Sport Ireland has done a legal analysis on yet? It is certainly something that could be looked at by such a central legal service. Is it something Sport Ireland has concerns about given that much of this sport is delivered through not-for-profit and volunteer-led organisations, as we are going to hear later on?

Specifically in relation to the Karshan situation, Sport Ireland is very cognisant of the huge risks to the sector around this decision. It is something we have liaised very closely with the Department on. We have been in close liaison with the Minister. It is a decision of Revenue; not a Sport Ireland decision. We have sought to get advice from the Department that we could present to the sector-----

For the benefit of anybody watching because it is a specific ruling, how does it apply to Sport Ireland, if Dr. May could summarise it?

It is not so much how it applies to Sport Ireland but the sector as a whole. There are many people who provide small amounts of their time in voluntary contributions to sporting organisations. The definition of the Karshan ruling would potentially define these people as employees, which has a significant impact on the national governing bodies which will now have to change their structures. As to individuals, we have examples of projects where we work with local sports partnerships in disadvantaged communities. This affects people who are recovering alcoholics or have difficult circumstances who, as part of the rebuilding of their confidence, we have provided with a small number of hours of work. They are not enthusiastic to engage with a process that now requires them to become employees. It is a very big risk. There are half a million volunteers working in sport in Ireland. This will have an impact across all sports and all levels of sport. We have seen it in the disability sector where the organisation responsible for a lot of the training and education in disability has now pulled back on many of the services it provides on foot of this decision. It is very significant.

As to what Sport Ireland can do, has done or is planning on doing, can Dr. May give us a summary?

Sport Ireland is very limited in what we can do, it is a decision of Revenue. Sport Ireland cannot change that decision. We have sought the advice of the Department and the Minister and I am sure the Department might like to give some input. We have sought its advice in providing training and advice to the sector because it is not an area of expertise for us.

Would Mr. Ó Lionáin like to add anything?

I will clarify one small thing. Revenue is implementing the decision but the decision is that of the Supreme Court. It is now established law and practice. The Department has raised this issue and its impacts for the sports ecosystem with the Department of Finance. That is a conversation I expect we will want to continue in the course of 2026. As to where it goes, I cannot say.

I thank our witnesses. To broaden the discussion out within the time I have remaining, do our witnesses feel that Sport Ireland, the national governing bodies and the local sports partnerships are in a position to deliver on the participation and inclusion objectives within minority sports?

Does Sport Ireland feel that it is in a position to deliver on the participation and inclusion objectives in minority sports? At previous sessions, I asked Dr. May to reflect on the remit that Sport Ireland has. Are there constraints for it in terms of delivery? Are there ways in which we, as legislators, we can improve its statutory footing in order to help it deliver on these objectives? How does Dr. May feel the overall picture looks?

I appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback in this area. As a development agency, we are very comfortable with the Sport Ireland Act, the legislation that underpins our functions. These functions are about providing guidance, developing the sector, growing and supporting. We provide toolkits, training and education in order to build a sector that has the capacity to provide opportunities for people to have more involvement in sport. We are comfortable that the rates of participation in Ireland have been growing consistently over the past number of years with the work Sport Ireland has done through the sports partnerships and the national governing bodies, so we have made a significant contribution. We continue to tackle some of the more difficult areas of participation, such as gender balance or the gradient between men and women and the disability and socio-economic gradients. We target programmes. We have very targeted initiatives. We have funding that is targeted at these different areas of disadvantage in order to ensure that we reach those most in need of our support.

Sr. May does not feel that Sport Ireland has any constraints in delivering this.

Not in relation to participation, no.

I thank Dr. May.

I apologise for being late. It is one of those days. I will start with Sport Ireland. The NGB model has been a huge success for the most part and has benefited many thousands of men, women and children involved in sport. However, there are some long-standing sporting bodies that received grants in the past, going back decades, which seem to have been frozen out in the context of the umbrella structure of the NGBs. Female Cue Sports Ireland is an example. It is trying to move towards a female NGB for cue sports separate to the overall NGB for whatever reason. The Angling Council of Ireland believes grant funds were promised to it but not fed down to it because it was not at the top of the structure of the NGB.

I want to tease out whether there are other groups Sport Ireland is aware of that are in a similar position to the two I mentioned. I have been trying to tease this out through parliamentary questions. Is there a way forward for these groups to get the recognition they believe they deserve so their participation can continue and they do not lose their memberships? Is there a way this committee can feed into supporting that? There might be a need for legislative change or whatever. This is for those groups which feel that they are outside the structures and have been left a little out in the cold. That is not to be harsh, but it is the reality of how the two organisations to which I refer fell. How do we bring everyone together in order that they can get recognition and avail of the funding, supports and everything else that other participants in the same sports currently receive?

I will defer to Mr. McDermott in a minute. From our point of view, we have a very tight-knit group. It is still large, 60 national governing bodies, and we have a philosophy around the supports we can provide to those governing bodies. We identify governing bodies now as the system. The sport sector is evolving and growing. There are compliance requirements and accountability needs. As funding increases, there are significant demands on these. We try to ensure that we support NGBs which have the ability to demonstrate that level of accountability. We also focus our best efforts on ensuring that we do not have multiple governing bodies representing similar sports, so we encourage sports where there are male and female versions to amalgamate. One of our big success stories was the amalgamation of the governing bodies for women’s golf and men’s golf into a single governing body. That is something we have as an ongoing philosophy for the development of sport.

I thank the Deputy for the question. It is very important in what we do. The diversity of the offering of sports and governing bodies is very important to us. We try to work with every governing body as best we can. The governing bodies are unique in their offerings because they have to govern. They keep the rules, national structure and so on.

Around cue sports and snooker, we have been trying to engage over the past number of years to increase female participation and the mechanism within that. We have invested time in talking to the various people involved in snooker. We would like to see snooker really thrive and for it to have female membership. We believe governing bodies should be gender equal and should work together on that. There has been a lot of attention on this. These things are not easily done. That is because they are small and each one has unique characteristics. They are club based, and there are people on the boards. There are a lot of really good people who are sincere involved. We never doubt anyone’s sincerity; they want to work with us. There are challenges in the area of cue sport but that is not to say we do not see the potential. It is about trying to get the right people in the room with us. The Deputy is probably aware of a protracted issue around women in sport funding within snooker, which turned into a bit of a saga. It is not to say we do not want it to happen, because we do. That is just a job of work my colleagues in the governing body units spend a lot of time on.

On angling, historically, the variety of fishing and angling governing bodies is kind of complex. There are a number of them in the areas of coarse angling, fly fishing and trout fishing. It is both a huge participation activity and an important sport, but this is about governance. We would prefer it if there was one overarching body that would impose standards. We are very aware that when you give people recognition and bring them into the governance code, it is quite a high bar because we are investing quite a substantial amount of public money over time. As a result, we have to set a standard.

Some of the individual sports need to work together and more collectively. That is just a piece of development work. We have seen it succeed in certain areas. There is a group of sports that comes under type A under the voluntary code. Those sports are volunteer led. It is challenging because the bar that is set is high. There should be an expectation that they should be able to deliver to a very high standard. We try not to leave them behind. We treat every governing body as a part of this - they are invited to engage in courses and development and they are part of everything we do in governing bodies. For example, when we had the annual grant announcement recently, a huge variety of governing bodies were represented. We value the fact they are in the room with the bigger governing bodies. It is certainly not our intention to leave anybody behind but it is challenging.

No, I am not suggesting that it is. I acknowledge that there have been efforts and attempts made, but the reality is that we have a huge number of female players involved in cue sports who are not part of the structures and supports and are not under the umbrella that should be there to serve them. I am not sure what the solution is. I understand there are issues going back a while but there is an onus on us all. I am thankful to have the opportunity to raise this today directly with Sport Ireland. There is an onus on all of us to work towards that. If I can assist with that in any way, Sport Ireland should feel free to reach out to me. I would be more than willing to meet to discuss that.

I appreciate that. I thank Deputy Byrne.

I have a few questions to pose before we do a second round. The first is on the status of the CEO of Rowing Ireland. Best wishes to her and all of that.

I was speaking to the interim CEO just this week. She is still on leave. There is an interim CEO acting in her stead.

Sport Ireland has had no face-to-face meetings with him since everything happened.

Only on the telephone. He was at an event that Mr. Harbison hosted at the institute as part of a group but we have not met one to one.

In 2019, Mr. Harbison wrote a letter to the then CEO of Rowing Ireland in which he expressed concerns about the ethos of how it did its work. What prompted him to send that correspondence? Given what we know now, it was pretty predictive of the evidence we heard here many years later.

On the background to that email, in our work with sports, we operate in partnership with high-performance programme leaderships. We have a team of support providers across disciplines who work as a multidisciplinary team. Our ability to integrate our team into the rowing programme was proving quite challenging in 2018 and 2019. On the back of a number of issues being raised around how our team-----

Why did Mr. Harbison think the ethos of Rowing Ireland was not similar to Sport Ireland's ethos?

Because that was what was being articulated to our team by the high-performance programme leadership.

So what were the issues between your team and the high-performance management in Rowing Ireland?

There were concerns about the use of the support by our team, that its expertise was not being utilised. It felt that its advice was not being properly responded to. It felt that the communication was not necessarily two-way. There were a range of issues that were compromising our ability to have an impact on the programme, which is what our purpose is.

What happened after you sent that letter?

There was a follow-up request for me to meet with a member of the high-performance committee in Rowing Ireland and the CEO.

Did that happen?

That meeting never happened. There was further engagement towards the back end of 2019 around trying to ensure we could establish an effective means of work to support athletes in the programme in the build-up to the Tokyo Olympic Games, which were subsequently postponed. We had a number of challenges, as members will have seen from the meeting log presented. There was a lot of engagement to try to ensure we were able to maintain and provide services to athletes.

So nothing happened.

Nothing happened-----

So the 2019 letter is pretty concerning, is it not?

Yes.

You had serious concerns about ethos. That is a big word. You say the ethos of the organisation does not comply with Sport Ireland, there are issues with high performance, you write to them, you look for meetings, they do not happen - effectively nothing happens. You did your best. Was this not raising pretty serious concerns?

At every juncture of the early part of this issue, we were trying to work locally with Rowing Ireland but in every case Rowing Ireland would present a robust defence of any of the concerns that were raised. We had a number of issues where there were areas of conflict between the institute and Rowing Ireland, which it again defended, to a point at which our relationship was pretty fraught. Our aim was to make sure we protected the support to the athletes in the build-up to the Olympic Games, as difficult as it was to work-----

Did you vocalise these concerns, and if so, with whom?

We were working locally between the institute and Rowing Ireland in the first stage, after a breakdown towards the end of 2019. I certainly would have briefed colleagues but again, we were working through the issues, trying to-----

Who did you brief?

I would have briefed the CEO at the time and Mr. McDermott. They were providing support to us to try to continue to work with Rowing Ireland to-----

When Mr. Harbison briefed you, Mr. McDermott, what did you do?

We supported Mr. Harbison and the institute team. We just said it was for them. The issue was not escalated for us to act on it but Mr. Harbison said that there were at the time challenging issues for the institute personnel, which we were aware of, but at the time-----

Did that not raise any red flags, considering everything we have heard here?

At the time, we had complete faith in Mr. Harbison and the institute service personnel. They were the top, most experienced service providers we had because it was after the success in Rio-----

I am not talking about Mr. Harbison. I have no issue there. I am talking about your own organisation. Did it not raise concerns to be looked into?

It certainly did. We were concerned about it but at that time, as we were going through the winter of 2019-2020, the rowing programme was preparing for the then 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

But that is irrelevant, being honest with you, Mr. McDermott. That has nothing to do with the question I asked. I know they were preparing. Everybody is always preparing for everything. Politicians are always preparing for elections. That does not mean we ignore stuff we have to do. What did you do based on the concerns that were raised through Mr. Harbison which were sent in to you? What actions did your organisation take at that time?

There was no action. I did not take any action arising from what Mr. Harbison said except to support him, to say he would brief us-----

There was no correlation concerning Sport Ireland at the time in relation to any of this.

I think-----

Sorry, may I ask Mr. McDermott to answer that one?

No, there was not because Mr. Harbison and his team were the responsible people to find a way to work with the high-performance leadership and the leadership of Rowing Ireland at that time. We had discussions with Rowing Ireland to say, "You have to work collectively on behalf of the athletes." We did not have a tolerance for the idea that it would dispute this. We were very sympathetic to our colleagues because they found it challenging, for sure.

I think this brings up a broader issue. Sorry, Mr. Harbison, you wanted to say something but first I will conclude. Deputy Cleere raised previously the issue as to how the Act for Sport Ireland is not functional any more and has to be changed on numerous levels. I am just telling the Department officials that.

Second, the statutory role, the formal structures as to which work is done by Sport Ireland, does not work and will not work into the future, in modern times. It is not built for modern times. Its structure organisationally, how it does things, does not work for modern times. I accept that it cannot deal with all grievances. I accept that it cannot deal with individual issues at the scale at which the whole of Ireland is involved in sport. I understand that but the structures currently do not work.

I call Mr. Harbison.

I was just going to make the point that at that stage it was clear athletes did not have the confidence to bring the issues forward within their own governing bodies so it was coming through our practitioner team, and from that then the welfare policy was developed. There was not one in place at the time whereby the policy became such that I would bring issues raised to the CEO of an NGB. That is the policy we activated.

Following that then, the development of the cultural development programme would have emerged in the 2020-2021-----

I call Senator Ahearn.

I will just follow up on that, Chair.

By the way, we have three minutes each.

The athletes did not feel as though they could raise it but the witnesses were noticing it at championships and events and the people who were there would have brought this back, obviously, to Sport Ireland to highlight that there were issues. When would that have been?

It is important to point out that some of our team were raising concerns because what they were witnessing within that programme was not what they were witnessing in other programmes that we were working on. Our team will work across-----

So there was an outlier.

Yes. Our team will work across a number of programmes. At that stage there was nothing concrete. Because there was a cluster of issues that were operational in nature and that were impacting our ability to support the athletes and the programmes-----

And once that was noticed that was brought back to the top team within Sport Ireland, I suspect, that-----

Sport Ireland Institute is part of Sport Ireland. It is the same organisation. We were dealing with it locally. I would have briefed colleagues probably later that year, when the relationship between ourselves and the high-performance leadership broke down.

That was back in what year?

That would have been the end of 2019, into early 2020.

Then what did Sport Ireland do? Can the witnesses as an organisation stand over and say from what they knew themselves, even before elite sports athletes had the confidence to say they were being really let down on welfare issues, that they could see it already with members who went there? What did they do subsequently after realising that this was a total outlier from other sporting organisations? Can they say here today that they felt as the CEO and as an organisation that they did enough to prevent this going on for I do not know how many years, to get to where we are today?

I will go back to something I said earlier. At the time, on every occasion when this was raised with Rowing Ireland, it would present a very robust defence to say it was not-----

But the witnesses could see on the ground that this was different.

There was nothing concrete. These were just concerns that were being raised-----

Observations.

-----but nothing specific. It was more about how the programme was being run, the training load, the monitoring, the training, the testing-----

Well, it was significant enough for the witnesses to set up a welfare programme.

The culture development programme would have emerged but that was probably going to emerge anyway because of issues that were emerging within global sport at the time. Certainly, it was appropriate that that programme was developed within Sport Ireland.

Mr. McDermott said earlier that there are two sporting organisations at the moment that have serious allegations or serious complaints made about them. Is that just two that have an ongoing investigation, and can he categorically say that it is literally just taekwondo and rugby?

First, I do not want to characterise them as serious because we do not have detail. We are familiar-----

But the question was put to the witnesses, "What allegations?", and Dr. May said there are serious ones and non-serious ones.

We asked the 21 high-performance sports bodies in good faith and they have responded to us with the information and two of them have reported to us that there is an issue-----

Without naming individuals, which obviously we do not want to do, Chair, what are those allegations?

I think that would not really be fair. I am not-----

That is not for Mr. McDermott to decide; that is the Chair's role. I am not asking for names.

I am not asking for allegations, but broad themes will be fine.

What is the allegation in rugby?

I have absolutely no knowledge of the rugby issue.

How do you know there is an allegation but you do not know what the allegation is?

Because we asked them under the survey. The committee asked Sport Ireland to issue a survey to the high-performance sports.

And the survey came back that there was a serious allegation.

No, it did not say "serious". There is something within the complaint. We will follow up and find out what it is.

What is the complaint?

I do not know what the complaint is.

When did this happen?

Is the Senator going to conclude?

This is very important.

Yes, I know, but very briefly.

When did this happen in rugby? When does the complaint go back to?

I do not have any information on it.

When did Sport Ireland become aware of it?

The information came back from the survey-----

When?

-----which was about nine days ago. We were asked by the committee to prepare the survey. We are aware of the taekwondo issue because it is something we are more familiar with on a day-to-day basis and it is in the broad athlete welfare category.

On the survey results, I am concerned about where certain things are ending up. I go back to the landscape and how things might be falling through cracks. Where a person aged under 16 is involved in a coaching environment that is negative, resulting in self-harm, I consider that serious. It is in the system. It has gone through an NGB, a club structure, county board level, Sport Ireland and the children's ombudsman. If that is not in the system, where is it? That is what I am getting at with the integrity piece. If those ones are not on Sport Ireland's radar after its survey, where do they end up? A few of them have come in to me. I am sure other members have had emails.

On supports for national governing bodies around legal advice, does Sport Ireland have an in-house counsel, legal director or somebody with a risk, compliance or governance law background? Who is filtering the complaints going through Sport Ireland for really serious, potentially criminal cases? Who filters them from a legal point of view? Does Sport Ireland outsource all its legal stuff?

We do not have in-house legal expertise but-----

How much does Sport Ireland then have to spend on legal costs?

I do not have the figures here but can easily provide them after the meeting.

Would it be beneficial to Sport Ireland to have in-house legal expertise or is Dr. May happy to go outside?

We seek legal advice when we require it but these issues are often dealt with at local level. The Senator captured it there. If it involves a minor, it will end up in front of the Ombudsman for Children, Tusla, the Garda or----

In that instance, the Ombudsman for Children said to go back to Sport Ireland. That was the response they got. We are running around in circles. When that complaint goes back to Sport Ireland, who is the person looking at it from a legal point of view? Is Sport Ireland going out to get that advice or is somebody in-house looking at it?

If there was a legal issue, we would go out of Sport Ireland's team to seek legal advice.

There must have been loads of them over the years. Using a ballpark figure, how much does Sport Ireland spend on legal fees?

Our legal fees cover many areas, everything from anti-doping to health and safety on the campus, NGB issues and trail issues. It would be very hard to put a figure on how much we spend on legal fees in this regard. We do not often have recourse to legal advice around safeguarding issues. They are generally addressed at national governing body level because we do not have that role-----

That is the problem. They are actually not dealt with at national governing body level a lot of the time. These complaints are falling through the cracks. That is a concern we all share. Perhaps the committee can get somewhere in the long term in filling that gap. The problem is they are not being dealt with.

It is important from Sport Ireland's point of view that we recognise the fact there are structures in place in the country, as we have made reference to - Tusla, the Garda, the Ombudsman for Children. If these legal entities that are established for enforcement of child welfare issues are not in a position to manage them, it is challenging for Sport Ireland to take them on because we are a development agency. We were not established to get to the bottom of legal issues such as those.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an finnéithe. I will move in a slightly different direction. We are here on minority sports. I put it to the Department that one of the challenges around supporting such sports is access to facilities, which is critical. We will have the community sport facilities fund, which I keep calling the sports capital and equipment programme. What initiatives are planned within that for minority sports to access facilities? Minority sports will not grow unless they have access to land, halls or facilities. What measures will be introduced or changes made within the new funding round?

Everything I say is in the context of a round that Ministers have said will hopefully open at the end of May or start of June. We are still finalising the review and all the learnings from the latest round and will make recommendations to the Ministers on what could happen in the new round.

In every round, we do regional education seminars. There is a strong argument that there should be a focus in those on smaller sports that do not have the resources of our big three field sports. We are looking at simplification of the application processes. Our experience is there are several steps at the outside that can - I will not say bamboozle - take a lot of effort for smaller organisations so we are looking at how to simplify those. An area both of our Ministers have highlighted is developing and encouraging partnerships, in particular for smaller sports, with local authorities, to give both developmental capacity and access to land, which is critical. The intention is the regional seminars will happen in April and May and there will be an opportunity to engage with those sports.

We have a second funding scheme, namely the large-scale sport infrastructure fund. Many smaller sports have benefited from that, particularly where they have pooled together and where local authorities have worked with them. That is a model we would like to promote.

Mr. Ó Líonáin will be familiar with the one in north Wexford. The key is around messages to local authorities to partner with those sports clubs without sports halls and facilities and to support them in accessing those assets.

Absolutely. I completely agree on that.

I thank the witnesses for their contributions on minority sports. Similar to a point previously raised, in the Wexford-Wicklow area we have a project in the pipeline called the east coast sports hub, which will serve the Gorey and Arklow areas and beyond. I am looking at funding streams for that. Wexford County Council planned to contribute up to €5 million, with a matching €5 million from the large scale sport infrastructure fund. This would cover a full-scale cricket pitch, hockey pitch, running track and cycle facilities and a basketball arena later on. This summer is the start date. Can the council access further funding to progress the project?

When applications were opened for the LSSIF two years ago, the east coast sports hub project scored very well because it had that multiplicity of sports. At a policy level, we want to encourage projects where a number of sports come together and collaborate with the local authority. Officials in the capital area of the Department, based in Killarney, are talking to Wexford County Council, in particular, on the timing of drawdown of the €5 million or so allocated under the LSSIF.

As part of those discussions, we have given feedback to Wexford County Council on how to best structure its drawdown application to facilitate that. We hope drawdown happens as soon as possible because as a Department we want to see as much drawdown as possible under this round of LSSIF to create the space for a third round of it in the coming years. We will take any meetings necessary with any of the partners in any of these applications to ensure they get off the ground. I commend the model of multiple sports working with local authorities. As a Department, we would like to see that happening elsewhere in the country.

That is great. I thank the officials.

Briefly, I was very taken by what Mr. Harbison said earlier. I have two questions for him and then something we might suggest for Sport Ireland as a committee. There was a letter in 2019. Subsequent to that, was he happy with how Sport Ireland dealt with the issue?

In 2019, I was dealing with-----

Let me rephrase because that was a bit loaded, to be fair to Mr. Harbison. Was he happy with how the issue was dealt with in 2019 and subsequently?

I was dealing with it locally with the institute as the representative for Sport Ireland, but it was a local issue until the formal complaint was raised in March 2021. Then, it was escalated formally, and immediately-----

Was Mr. Harbison happy with how it was dealt with?

Yes. It was a very challenging time. A range of supports were put in place and there was every effort. There was a lot of engagement between Sport Ireland and Rowing Ireland-----

Mr. Harbison was happy with how it was dealt with.

I was happy that every effort was being made to try to resolve the issues.

I am not trying to put him on the spot, but I am just not sure what his answer is really saying.

I would certainly say that from a Sport Ireland perspective, we were dealing with the issues. We worked in partnership with the sports. A robust defence was put up by Rowing Ireland at every juncture. That made it very difficult, but as colleagues went through the levers to try to get some changes, that ultimately led to the-----

So, Mr. Harbison was happy with how it was deal with.

Ultimately, yes.

Okay. Has there ever been another case where Mr. Harbison had to write such an email or letter to any other national governing body?

No.

This is the only case.

It is the only case where I have written a letter. In a couple of cases, I would have raised concerns and they would have been dealt with quite quickly.

This is the only national governing body that-----

Sorry. There was one other I did write to but it was dealt with appropriately.

Where was that?

Where was the-----

Mr. Harbison said there was another organisation.

There was another I wrote to to express an issue. It was a completely separate issue. Basically, the athlete welfare policy was that issues were to be brought to my attention by the institute practitioner team. If I felt there were issues that needed to be raised to the highest level of the organisation, I would brief the CEO.

So, this is the only case where Mr. Harbison had to write to a national governing body expressing issues in relation to its ethos and how it was dealing with high performance.

Yes.

That is a big statement, is it not?

Dr. May, other committee members and I have got lots of correspondence about raising concerns with the FAI. As a committee, we were going to write to Dr. May to have Sport Ireland look into this whole issue because a lot of us have had correspondence on it. It is not really our role as a committee to go into that area but it is an issue we would like Sport Ireland to look at, so we will be writing to her about it. It is for Sport Ireland to see if the policy, programme, strategy or whatever you want to call it that has been put in place to deal with issues like this is working at one of the largest sporting organisations in the country. I just wanted to flag that with her.

That concludes our first session. We will suspend while the witnesses leave.

I welcome, from the Federation of Irish Sport, Ms Mary O'Connor, CEO; from Cricket Ireland, the incoming CEO, Ms Sarah Keane; and Mr. Ciaran Gallagher, who is CEO of Gymnastics Ireland. The format of the meeting is normally such that I would invite the witnesses to deliver an opening statement but we are going to leave that, if that is okay, because we have read them. This would normally be followed by questions from members of the committee. As the witnesses are probably aware, the committee will publish the opening statements on its web page.

Before we move to today's discussion, I would like to clarify some limitations in relation to parliamentary privilege and the practice of the Houses as regards references witnesses may make to other persons in their evidence. The evidence of witnesses physically present or who give evidence from within the parliamentary precincts is protected pursuant to both the Constitution and statute by absolute privilege in respect of the presentations they make to the committee. This means that they have an absolute defence against any defamation action for anything they say at the meeting. However, they are expected not to abuse this privilege, and it is my duty as Chair to ensure that this privilege is not abused. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the Houses or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Is that agreed? Agreed.

I thank the witnesses for coming in. I will pick up on what I was talking about beforehand, that is, supports for NGBs outside of the field of play. It is interesting that, in Mr. Gallagher's statement, he made reference to supports of that kind that would be useful. Ms O'Connor mentioned centralised legal services and Ms Keane mentioned the independent integrity unit. Will the witnesses expand on what they think off-the-field supports for NGBs might look like? Would Mr. Gallagher like to go first?

I can refer to the developments that Gymnastics Ireland has had to implement over the last number of years, particularly as we emerged from the Covid pandemic. We have gone from having a relatively small team and small investment in this area to having to put in a significant six-figure sum. This includes a safeguarding manager and a director of community support and operation. Through our discipline and complaints body, we also independently contract an investigations officer, who is a barrister, and another barrister, who is our complaints and disciplinary officer, to deliver our quite comprehensive complaints and disciplinary policy nationally. The point I was making relates to the core funding. Core funding really needs to be targeted at this area. In the last number of cycles, we have focused a lot on increasing high-performance funding to the level of the comparator nations against which we want to benchmark ourselves. Good work has been done there. We need to keep our eye on the ball in that area but there should also be a focus on core funding to support these areas because, in having to invest money in them, we are ultimately taking money off the field of play and development. You are constantly trying to balance these two things.

If that could be outsourced to an independent unit, like the barristers and legal services Mr. Gallagher spoke about bringing in, outside of the NGB, none of Gymnastics Ireland's core funding would have to go on off-the-field stuff. It could all be put into the athletes.

You will always need some form of internal resource within your organisation. It depends on how these things are set up, and there are many models internationally, but you are always going to need your hand on the ball within your own organisation, to coin a pun.

How does Ms O'Connor see external supports working?

I am conscious of time but I will speak about two things. In 2014, correspondence was sent out to all funded organisations informing them that they had to have an alternative dispute resolution mechanism available to them, with the exception of the big three, rugby, the FAI and the GAA, which would have the opportunity to have an in-house mechanism. We provide a service called Sport Dispute Solutions Ireland. If all internal avenues within an NGB have been exhausted with regard to a specific case, it can be referred to SDSI for either arbitration or mediation. I would like to see minority sports' NGBs in particular having the opportunity to be educated on how to ensure that processes and procedures are fit for purpose, should a complaint come to them. If all internal avenues are exhausted, the case can be brought to SDSI. That is one aspect. For an organisation that has limited resources, ensuring that processes and procedures are legal, compliant and so on can take an awful lot of financial resources that they just do not have, unfortunately for them. They will also need training for the people sitting on the panels that consider cases. That needs to be looked at.

When I spoke about this in my opening statement, I also spoke about the opportunity for minority sports to get support with regard to contracts, sponsorship agreements, intellectual property rights and things like that. No minority sport is going to have in-house expertise in all of these areas. Sport Ireland has appointed an external HR provider for some small sports that are transitioning into employing people. That has been really quite successful.

Ms O'Connor sees it as involving ancillary services outside of legal services alone. Okay. I just want to give Ms Keane some time. We do not have many members here. On the model she described, she made reference to the UK and Australia. There are also such units in Canada and New Zealand. They are not all the same. As Dr. Úna May referenced, they do have their constraints. The units in each of the countries that have adopted them are not all the same. Ms Keane has expressed an interest in looking at something like this for this sports landscape. What does she think it would look like for Irish sport?

Sport in Ireland has evolved massively over the last 20 years. A lot of that has to do with the work of the people who are committed to it, Sport Ireland and Government investment. Having said that, we are very privileged to be involved in sport. We deal with young people's dreams, health, welfare and safety so we have to be accountable. In my opinion, there is a real question as to how accountable the sector is. That is through no one's fault as regards the efforts that are made but it is why it is worth looking at best practice abroad. Some of these things are being trialled abroad. They are not all necessarily working. There are challenges around them but these issues are really complex.

To take the area of safeguarding for example, there is training and vetting. A lot of people do not understand vetting. There are actually a lot of different standards as to what different governing bodies accept in vetting disclosures. Nobody is really challenging that.

In terms of concerns versus complaints, different governing bodies are dealing with this issue differently. Again, it goes back to their level of experience or expertise. Swim Ireland and Irish swimming have a very significant history, which we can never forget. We can never be complacent with regard to what happened to young people. As a result, when I was involved in Swim Ireland, we prided ourselves on the level of attention we paid to concerns. A lot of people will not raise a complaint so concerns must be dealt with. They must be dealt with by people with expertise and in a way that allows people to trust that they can come forward. The challenge is that people will often come forward with serious matters but they will not go to the police or statutory authorities about them because of the trauma they have endured or suffered. If you are under 18, mandatory reporting applies but that is not the case for matters affecting over-18s. That can leave a governing body in a very difficult situation. There can also be situations where somebody is tried and found not guilty. It then comes back to the governing body to decide how to deal with that. Again, there is no clear standard as to how to deal with that. Different governing bodies will deal with those things differently depending on their own internal standards.

By the way, we work internationally. Governing bodies must be independent. That is part of being part of an international federation and being part of world sport. The question is how you manage a governing body's independence while also knowing it has the right supports, procedures and disciplinary mechanisms in place.

I thank our witnesses not just for being here, but for the work they do. It is critical. There is a point to be made regarding the capacity of smaller NGBs. We should raise some of the recommendations that have been made with the Minister. It is a challenge for every organisation, especially given the limited number of people at a senior level employed by the organisations. We need to factor more of that in. I am very keen to look at how we can support grassroots minority organisations.

I have raised this previously. One of the issues relates to the funding models that are available for minority sports, particularly when they do not own an asset, whether that be a field or a hall. I am thinking about this in the context of the next round of sports capital grants and the large-scale sport infrastructure funding. The witnesses will have heard Mr. Ó Lionáin's contribution earlier. Are there any specific recommendations they would like us to bring forward in the context of those funding models to support grassroots minority sports?

We need to look at the definition of minority sports for starters. Traditionally, we have had the big three sports in this country. In the recent budget, those sports still received most of the funding. They continue to grow while the rest of us are trying to grow as well. Thanks to the national sports policy and investment over the past number of years, a lot of sports are growing. If we want to give everybody an opportunity to participate in sport - young, old, able-bodied, disabled, etc. - we have to provide a breadth of sports.

Cricket, for example, is a growing sport in Ireland and one that is welcomed by many people who are new to the country. It is the second biggest sport in the world. It is not a minority sport internationally and there is no reason that it should continue to be a minority sport here. Swimming may be called a minority sport, yet it is the second most popular sport for adults after personal exercise. Sport Ireland and the national sports policy are looking at whether swimming, running, cycling and these other sports should be the main sports, not the minority sports. We have an ageing population. We want sports to be available that allow people to be involved in physical exercise and activity throughout their lives.

The traditional big sports have the infrastructure. We all need more infrastructure, including those big sports, but they traditionally have had more infrastructure, more support, more development officers and so on. There is a need for the other sports to catch up. Infrastructure is certainly a challenge for many sports. We have waiting lists in swimming and gymnastics. There are lots of people who want to play cricket, but we do not have the infrastructure. We need to look at a wider facilities structure. We might need to do a facilities audit of each sport and then pull all that information together into the wider Government sports policy for next year. As someone who has been involved in sports policy implementation, I am strongly of the view that infrastructure should be front and foremost as one of the big pillars of the next national sports policy.

I referred to two key points in the statement I submitted. One is the point Ms Keane just made, which is that NGBs must be baked into the whole capital investment process in a more strategic manner. That would require a level of work on the part of each of the national governing bodies on cases to develop a framework. We know our sports, who can run things well, where they can do it and where the investment will be well spent.

The second point goes back to the core funding launch at the start of the year. The Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, made a statement that I feel very strongly about in relation to the need for more targeted investment in the large-scale sport infrastructure fund. We need municipal facilities around the country and significant targeted investment. We are not going to be everything to everybody but we can win big by recognising that we can all pull together. That would be a really good step forward.

We need to look beyond guidelines at access to community facilities in after-school hours. There has been significant State investment in education and there should be access to facilities after school for community groups. We need to move beyond guidelines. They were good up to a point but some people can use them as an excuse not to facilitate access.

I smiled when the Deputy asked his question because his colleague Deputy Carrigy wrote to me a couple of weeks ago looking for details of stadiums and facilities that have sensory rooms. It was one of the easiest pieces of work I have done to reply to him because, outside of the big three, very few of the minority sports have stadiums or facilities they own. Some have to rent them out. In January 2025, the Federation of Irish Sport set up an indoor sports working group to try to establish what the challenges are for that sector. It found that infrastructure is one of those challenges. We made a submission to the Department of sport in November outlining what we would like to see happen, including basic things such as that under the new large-scale sports capital funding, there be a requirement for a certain height of ceiling and different types of changing rooms. All of that is in the report and it came directly from people in the sector. It is important that their voice be heard.

I thank the witnesses for being here. All their submissions and contributions have been very helpful. On the specific point regarding a centrality of services for smaller bodies, I am sure it is on their radar that the Carmichael Centre does something really similar in respect of civil society and the NGO sector. There could be a good conversation to be had between that organisation and the witnesses. It is a very similar model to what we are discussing for sport. The Wheel is the central advocacy body for NGOs but the Carmichael Centre sounds a little more like what the witnesses have suggested.

I have some questions for Ms Keane. We spoke previously when she was in her role in Swim Ireland. She speaks very strongly on the legacy of the sport and what she has done in her role, and what had been done by the organisation, to deal specifically with safeguarding, which has been a topic of conversation at this committee. She said in her submission:

[While] Sport Ireland can report and withhold funding, its capacity to investigate or enact disciplinary action is indirect, relying on co-operation from NGBs, law enforcement or independent panels.

Does she see value in legislative reform to strengthen Sport Ireland's remit and powers to deal with this issue?

My overall assessment is that there are gaps in the system. What the right answer to that is would require further thought. Some governing bodies fiercely protect their independence. Some governing bodies have excellent systems in place and others are aiming to have them in place. It is a process of evolution. Without a doubt, there are gaps in the system. A lot of the audits undertaken by Sport Ireland or otherwise look at certain governance models and certain issues, and they can be very comprehensive, but I understand they do not look into the detail of the complaints and disciplinary processes.

One of the big challenges with outsourcing to something like the Carmichael Centre or LEADER is that there is a need for involvement by people who understand high-performance sport and have that level of expertise and understanding. An example would be that swimming is an early-specialisation sports, while rowing is a late-specialisation sport and athletics is a mid-to-late specialisation. There needs to be an understanding of that because these factors are very relevant in terms of how things are done. A young female athlete in swimming would do more work than a young male athlete. There could be a question as to how much training girls are doing, whether it is too much, what level they are at and whether it is impacting their puberty. That is a big issue for female athletes. It would need somebody who understands the sport and all of that in order to make the right assessment. That is why we need to be very careful about outsourcing. Sometimes, we go back to things like the integrity unit, where there are people with that level of expertise. It would not just be legal but also medical and having somebody from the sport. When I sat on Sport Ireland's anti-doping panels, there would have been a legal person, a sports administrator and a medical person. A level of expertise is needed to support these processes. It goes back as well to the whole trust aspect.

I thank Ms Keane. Regarding her new role in Cricket Ireland, the discussion about what is a minority sport is fascinating. It is really exciting that some of the T20 World Cup 2030 games will be played here. As she said, it is a really good opportunity for inclusion, particularly given that so many of the people who are active in the sport in this country are from new communities. What more can be done between now and 2030 to capitalise on the impact of that tournament?

We very much welcome the investment in having a stage for the sport. We are looking to upgrade facilities across the country generally, which is why having a facilities strategy and investment around that will be key. Only 22% of our playing population are female, which is a challenge for us. Part of that is lack of infrastructure and a way into learning the sport, and that comes down to investment in pathways. We have heard the Government say it will put a certain amount of money into women's rugby, for example, or into hurling. There is a question around the need to look more widely at the growing sports around the country and ones that can have an impact on diverse communities.

Is it effectively question of needing more money?

More money is needed but it is wider than money. We do not have to look every time at building the biggest stadium ever. We can build a pitch or bring certain equipment onto a pitch. If we could get a clearer template for that with the local authorities, as part of the local sports plans, that would be important. Again, however, we are seeing certain sports being prioritised by local authorities as well as generally across the country. It is about finding a way of ensuring we look at a wider breadth of sports. The situation is changing but not quickly enough.

I thank Ms Keane. I will have questions for the other witnesses in the next round.

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for the work they are doing in minority sports. I see the benefit of that work in Clonmel, where a new cricket club was set up a number of years ago. It has been really successful.

We spoke earlier about sport welfare, as we have done at previous meetings of the committee.

I welcome Mr. Gallagher. I am happy he is here because he has been a hard man to find for the past couple of years. There was a controversy in relation to gymnastics four years ago. I do not recall him speaking about it as the CEO. I could be wrong but I did not see an interview with him at the time. It was a very sensitive subject. He can correct me if I am wrong and he has spoken on it. I know a statement was put out by Gymnastics Ireland 18 months after the event. Has Mr. Gallagher made a personal statement as CEO on it?

A personal statement, no.

Why?

I was up with the organisation and I think that is-----

But Mr. Gallagher is CEO. With any controversy that happens with any organisation, leadership comes to the fore and people stand up and either explain what happened or apologise for what happened. Has Mr. Gallagher ever actually apologised on behalf of the organisation?

Yes, Gymnastics Ireland issued a full apology on its website. We also issued apologies separately in written form.

Why did the apology take 18 months?

With the position we put forward-----

It was September 2023 when the apology was made. It happened in March 2022.

The position that we would put forward, in terms of whenever the initial incident occurred that the Senator is referencing, is that apologies were issued through email. We tried to facilitate a process whereby the parties involved could come together and go through an informal process. That was rejected, and we ended up then moving it to the next stage of the process for dealing with it, which was a mediation through Sport Dispute Solutions Ireland. That process took a number of months to get people working within that system, and then the mediation agreement was signed. Subsequently, following that mediation-----

In that statement in September 2023, Gymnastics Ireland acknowledged that what happened had an impact on the individual. I do not want to get into the personal situation but it had an impact on the individual. Gymnastics Ireland also acknowledged its reaction to it had an impact on the welfare of the athlete, so why did it take 18 months?

At the time, the CEO of Sport Ireland, Dr. Úna May, who I think is still in the Gallery, said that it was not racism and the medals were simply mixed up. Four years later, is it still Mr. Gallagher's view that it was not racism?

That was not a view I ever articulated.

No, I am not saying Mr. Gallagher did. Did he agree at the time and does he agree now, four years later, that it was not racism------

I would not-----

-----and that it was simply a mix up of medals?

I would have to refer back to the statements released on the Gymnastics Ireland website in relation to the matter. The critical thing for us is the length of time we are dealing with it.