On 28 January, we at the Oireachtas joint committee on sport heard about safeguarding in sport. We heard from Sport Ireland, Rowing Ireland and the Federation of Irish Sport. There was one athlete manager in place, as we learned from the federation at the time. This one individual at the federation was the only person athletes could go to with concerns around training, balancing sport with commitments to education or anything else. It is a broad remit. The CEO of the federation, Mary O'Connor, told us that athlete support manager could be dealing with up to 250 high-performance athletes at one time across 25 national governing bodies. The CEO had been appealing to Sport Ireland for one more athlete support manager - or many more athlete support managers - for quite some time. She reiterated that call at the committee, as did I, when we heard evidence of what had transpired and could have been better dealt with - maybe even avoided - at the Rowing Ireland high-performance programme.

That was why I was encouraged to see news yesterday of a post boarded by the Federation of Irish Sport for an athlete support executive. It is 30 hour per week position and is certainly a step in the right direction for the safeguarding and welfare of our athletes. Gymnastics Ireland also advertised for an athlete framework service manager, so I really think we are going in the right direction. We need to go further long term. We need a sports integrity unit. Having said that, however, we are definitely moving towards understanding that we need to be a little bit more proactive instead of reactive in terms of safeguarding our athletes. I want to mention one other thing before I go because I did mention Gymnastics Ireland. I want to congratulate 13-year-old JJ Peters from Douglas Gymnastics Club who competed at her first international competition this week in Slovenia for Ireland. She is 13 years of age in a high-performance programme and she finished eleventh out of 86 gymnasts across Europe. I want to call that out and say well done. Gymnastics Ireland obviously has a pathway that is working very well at the moment. I congratulate JJ on her first time competing for Ireland at just 13 years of age.