Budget 2021 will mark a “watershed moment” for Irish sport after a year in which governing bodies have experienced losses of up to 70% of their self-generated income.
Mary O’Connor, CEO of the Federation of Irish Sport, gave evidence to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport, and the Gaeltacht on Wednesday, where she warned that any failure to increase government funding could create an “insurmountable gap” to meet the National Sports Policy target of doubling investment in sport to €220m by 2027.
Examples of the scars the coronavirus shutdowns will leave on Irish sport were given, with over 10% of Irish swimming pools, around 35 in total, having closed permanently since March.
Badminton Ireland have seen 10,000 players and 250 clubs fall away as affiliation fees slump by 76% compared to this time last year. This equates to a loss of over €190,000.
Athletics Ireland, who were due to host the European Cross Country Championships in December, are instead involved in a redundancy process with 15% of their staff, having seen their income halved in the second half of 2020. A further 40% of staff have been on short time since May.
The ‘big three’ of the GAA, FAI, and IRFU have already outlined estimates for combined financial losses of €81m this year. That trio are due to get €40m of the government’s €70m resilience fund for sport, with €10m ringfenced for smaller national governing bodies, €15m for struggling clubs, and €5m for a sports restart and renewal programme.
O’Connor said she hopes that money will be distributed to bodies this month as applications, which were received in September, are currently being considered by Sport Ireland.
It will, however, not cure all of Irish sport’s woes.
The fund was implemented at a time when it was anticipated sport would be further down the road to recovery by now. As events continue to be cancelled and mass crowds remain out of the question, O’Connor expressed significant concerns over the “long-term viability of people and programmes if financial losses persist”.
She also warned of a “stagnation of emerging talent” which will result in a “long-term impact” on Ireland’s ambitions for the Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games. While funding for the delayed Tokyo Olympics remains in place for carded athletes, a return to Level 5 coronavirus restrictions would be “catastrophic” and lead to a “competitive disadvantage”.
“Our single biggest ask is that Budget 2021 provides for further investment in people and programmes by increasing core funding for sporting organisations,” O’Connor told TDs and senators during a 45-minute hearing where she cited the societal benefits of that investment for physical health and mental wellbeing.
There’s an expectation, notwithstanding the pressure on the public finances, that the funding will increase in line with the National Sports Policy.”
While Athletics Ireland is the only governing body currently involved in a redundancy process, O’Connor said others would have to consider similar measures.
Speaking about the increased costs involved in operating during a pandemic, Athletics Ireland CEO Hamish Adams gave the example of the five-person group being sent to the World Half Marathon Championships in Poland next week.
Each will be tested four times, once before leaving Ireland, once on arriving in Poland, and twice upon their return. The four tests will cost €600 per person.
“That is a tiny team,” he said. “Over the course of the year, we will send over 200 athletes to events. Each of those athletes will also have to stay in single rooms.
“Those are just two examples of why we will require additional funding and additional support to help our talented athletes across all sports to be the best they can be and make our nation proud.”
Swim Ireland chairperson Peter Conway appealed for swimming lessons, which had been permitted under Level 2 coronavirus restrictions, be allowed to resume at Level 3 with carefully regulated numbers.
That association has experienced a 79% drop in income from lessons, while leisure centres and pools suffered a 65% overall decline in revenue from March to August.
“We see a place for swimming lessons within Level 3,” he said.
The reality is learning to swim saves lives. No doubt with the absence of swimming lessons during the pandemic there will be a cost somewhere along the line.”
Badminton Ireland CEO David McGill said access to halls and uncertainty over restrictions were driving the drop off in participation, while Cara CEO Niamh Daffy called for sport for people with disabilities to be at the heart of all government plans.
Today, October 7th, the Federation of Irish Sport accepted an invitation from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and An Gaeltacht to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on sporting organisations and mass participation events. It was a welcome opportunity to highlight the significant challenges facing a sector that generates €2.7bn in consumer spending each year and employs some 39,500 people.
The impact of COVID-19 has been devastating for clubs and their governing bodies for many reasons, including significant financial losses of up to 70%, reduced provision of programmes and initiatives for participation and cancellation of seasons, leagues and events. Today was an opportunity to illustrate examples of such loss and emphasis the importance of continued government support for the sector building on the previously welcomed €70 support package announced in June.
It also provided a further platform to illustrate our pre-budget asks of government in advance of the publication of the 2021 budget on October 13th. At today’s hearing the Federation reiterated the importance of the National Sports Policy and it’s target trajectory over the next 7 years. The Federation’s single biggest ask is that government continue to deliver on their commitment to incrementally double funding for sport by 2027. While the challenge of COVID-19 has been immense for many organisations, is it essential that the long term future of the sport sector is protected and invested in in order to deliver a brighter future for all who engage with it. While the sector must survive COVID-19 in order to thrive long into the future, commitment by government to build on progress made prior to the pandemic is vital.
Speaking after the committee meeting, Federation of Irish Sport CEO Mary O’Connor said,
‘We are pleased to have the opportunity to appear before the committee today and highlight some of the significant challenges facing our member organisations as they look towards 2021. While COVID-19 has been devastating in 2020, we are also concerned about what 2021 will bring for a sector that relies so heavily on mass participation and bringing people together to take part. We have stressed the importance of continued COVID related supports to build on the government support package of June but we have also demonstrated the need for a continued and sustained increase in funding for sporting organisations. It is essential that core funding is maintained so that when this pandemic begins to retreat, our organisations are ready to build on the very successful position they held heading into 2020 and continue to provide invaluable opportunities for individuals to become healthier, more active members of our society.”
The Federation of Irish Sport has asked the government to honour commitments made in the National Sports Policy 2018-2027 for funding in order “to ensure the survival of sport and physical activity in Ireland”.
The call was made in the federation’s pre-budget submission, which highlights the need for such commitments to be met following the devastating impact that Covid-19 has had on Irish sports’ finances.
Business and employment supports made available by Government, coupled with the sport-specific rescue package of €70m announced in June, assisted in keeping organisations afloat this year.
However, the federation believes further investment is now needed to ensure that organisations not only survive, but to adapt and rebuild next year.
Last week the GAA, FAI and IRFU told an Oireachtas committee that they faced multi-million euro deficits and would require significant funding in the future due to a lack of crowds attending events.
The federation is also requesting that the Government invests €2.34m for communication and educational programmes on the importance of sport and the protection of those at risk from gambling in the sporting community, as well as €1.35m to help tackle obesity.
Mary O’Connor, CEO of the Federation of Irish Sport, said: “Earlier this year, we welcomed the introduction of the Covid-19 Resilience Fund for Sport and Physical Activity announced by Government.
“However, as the pandemic continues to permeate every element of society, it is imperative that national governing bodies, local sports partnerships and clubs all around the country continue to receive financial investment from Government.
“At a time when all other sources of revenue are under sustained pressure, Government investment in sport has never been so important. This investment is necessary to ensure the continued delivery of sports programmes nationwide and the benefits to health, wellbeing and community solidarity that this will bring.”
Paralympics Ireland CEO Miriam Malone on the balance and perspective required to steer her organisation to the most challenging times in history.
Q: How has this time been for you personally?
A: It’s been an interesting time, combining work and home – I realised early on that the experiences people had in this situation varied widely according to their circumstances, whether they could work from home, what age their kids were and so on. I was lucky that these were all positive for me. I could work from home, my kids are 11 and 12 so they’re mostly independent learners, and I have supportive family and colleagues. I was able to adapt and it worked out well from my perspective.
Q: Have you found out anything that you will stay with you once this is over?
A: Overall it’s been an opportunity for self-reflection and resetting priorities. The main thing has been to keep balance and perspective when it comes to work and life, appreciating all the positive things. From a work perspective, seeing our team in action throughout has been very rewarding. They’re very committed and rose to the challenge, managing extremely well in the crisis. The postponement of the Games was a huge challenge, though.
Q: How are you keeping in touch with your members?
A: We’re Zooming away, using Microsoft Teams, all of that. At the start we drew up a stakeholder mapping exercise and plan, looking to see how we’d stay in contact with all our stakeholders, and that’s worked very well for us. In the middle of the lockdown we actually had an AGM online, and it was our best-attended so far.
Q: What kind of 2020 had you been looking forward to before this struck?
A: The postponement of the Games was massive, obviously, because we’d been so focused on that not just this year but for the last number of years. When the decision came in March to postpone it was nearly welcome because the world had been changing so rapidly at that stage. There was almost a sense of relief that a decision had finally been taken.
Disappointed as we were, it was completely understandable. Nobody wanted to be taking off to Tokyo under these conditions. But it was a huge change for the athletes. Operationally we could adjust, but the athletes were gearing up to peak at a particular time, so it was a massive adjustment for them.
Q: How severe are the financial losses you anticipate for your organisation?
A: It’ll be interesting. We have two challenges from that perspective. One is the loss of revenue from a fundraising and sponsorship point of view, while the second issue is the ring-fencing of expenditure that would have been geared towards the Games. We still need all that funding, so we have to ring-fence it and carry it through to 2021 – while also supporting our athletes this year. So the challenge is to reduce costs as much as we can while also supporting athletes so we can maintain the level required to compete at Tokyo next year.
Q: What kind of Government supports and direction will help in the crisis?
A: We’ve had a good response from Sport Ireland and the Government overall, to be fair. The guarantee of international athlete carding was a great comfort for the athletes, for instance.
Sport Ireland has engaged with us all the way through, which is great, and we’re lucky to get a significant percentage of our funding from them. It’s been great having that confirmed.
The two outgoing Ministers, Shane Ross and Brendan Griffin, have been very good and I’d like to thank them for that – they kept engaging with CEOs to ensure they listened to what challenges we were having and to adapt as much as they could in a proactive way to deal with those.
Q: Was there a moment you realised this was a challenge on an entirely different scale?
A: Our chief medical officer, Dr Martin McConaghey, was raising the potential problems the virus could cause as early as January, and we had to cancel some competitions at the end of February, which was a little ahead of the big decisions.
Some of the athletes mightn’t have fully understood why we did that then but the big changes were coming, and of course the postponement of the Games was the other big one.
Q: How is morale among members?
A: It’s been good among the athletes. Obviously it’s a very frustrating time for them and their support groups when sport closed down.
It’s particularly frustrating for high-performance athletes who are used to a particular lifestyle which they build around training and competing. Asking them to slow down is a big ask when for them training and competition are their whole careers.
They’ve done really well, though – they’re very resilient and they’re delighted to be getting back to training.
The key for us is to get back to international competition when that time comes. The fact that the Games weren’t cancelled but were postponed, and the fact that there’s a date now in 2021 for the rescheduled Games, was a morale boost for everybody. It’s a real sign there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
Q: Do you see any overseas solutions worth applying in Ireland?
A: It’s been a time of reflection, as I said, and a time to take a strategic look at where we’re going. From our side we have a unique scenario in that we’re the national governing body for two different sports, para athletics and para swimming. Overseas, national governing bodies in countries like the Netherlands have moved from a situation like ours to putting these sports in with their able-bodied equivalents with very encouraging results.
Chris Kitchen will finish up as CEO of Triatlon Ireland in the coming months after eight hugely successful years. He tells Brendan O’Brien about the many ups as well as the recent downs brought on by the Covid-19 crisis and what’s next.
What was the moment you realised that this was a challenge on an entirely different scale?
It was mid-March. I hadn’t had a holiday for two years so my wife and I went over to St Lucia. Much to her annoyance I take my laptop with me so I’m not coming back to loads of emails. I was having a chat with our operations director and suddenly realised that we would have to shut the office down. We knew then that this would be a huge problem for TI even if we didn’t realise it would go on so long.
That must have ruined the holiday.
It certainly distracted us a bit! We actually caught one of the last flights out of St Lucia on BA [British Airways]. They were shutting down the island the next day so we only got back by the skin of our teeth.
You have worked in IT, been a company owner and even an ice cream van salesman but has anything in your past professional experience been any help in dealing with everything that has happened this last four months?
It’s on a totally different scale. I have been through about three recessions and I’ve had to take difficult decisions in the past in order to keep companies going so that they could carry on but this is very, very different. We are used to working remotely anyway but I have to say that the staff’s reaction has been phenomenal.
Triathlon Ireland made huge strides in recent years with increases in membership, events, the number of clubs and your operating budget but what has the financial impact of all this been?
Similar to many sports. It has maybe hit us harder than some actually because we had three distinct funding streams with the funding from Sport Ireland and Sport Northern Ireland making up 30%, almost 40% of it from membership and the remainder from sponsorship and events. Two of those streams dropped through the floor so diversifying income streams as Sport Ireland asked us to do has probably hit us more than some sports that are solely reliable on Sport Ireland for their funding.
We had a drop of something like 85% in membership between March and June, a 98% drop in events income in the same time and a 100% drop in one-day licences that we sell to events so it has been a massive hit for us. We normally sanction 200-plus events a year. We will probably sanction 30-40 this year.
We had built up a big reserve which has given us some resilience and we would have had to make some redundancies and some short-time working arrangements if it hadn’t been for those reserves and the wage support scheme from the government. We’re hurting. We’ve cut our expenditure massively and next year is a major year with the Olympics and you would worry about membership as well.
Will TI be looking to access the government’s recently announced rescue package for sport?
We will but we don’t want to be taking money. We want to do something for it. We are not just going with the begging bowl. We want to deliver something and that may be in increased participation because we have had so many more people in Ireland who have gone out for a run, a walk or a bike. We would like to attract a lot of those people.
When are we likely to see triathlons being held again, bearing in mind that this is a fluid situation?
We cancelled events for March, then April and up to June and it is very fluid. We are now into phase three of the roadmap so we can get events back up and running. We have about 30 on the calendar and four or five major events from the BMW National Series. They will kick off from July 20th onwards with social distancing in mind. We all have to be so sure that there are no spikes in infections so we are very cautious.
We are hoping to get a few open water triathlons up and running from mid-July into August and then September before the water gets too cold. Some of the duathlons that we would have had in March and April are being put back to October. Some events will likely get merged with the costs of carrying on and the social distancing element adds to that cost. It would be nice to have a crystal ball, wouldn’t it?
You are vice-president of the European Triathlon Union. How is the roadmap back to training and competition elsewhere?
Most of the European nations now are easing lockdown, even the Italians and the Spanish who are probably two or three weeks ahead of us with the virus and the easing. There has been a massive hit across Europe in terms of events and some of the countries have allowed their elite athletes to have swim training for quite some time. That was a bit of a problem for us until the pools reopened. It still means we are a bit behind some of the European nations.
We are still trying to run the European Championships in Estonia on the 29th of August and then there will be another half-dozen events up to the last one in Portugal in November. We send 300-plus athletes to compete in the European Championships every year because we have five-year age bands in the sport and that has been a major topic of discussion among the countries recently. If you don’t have the income from all those people coming then it is very hard to run the event.
You are finishing up as CEO soon after eight years in the role. What are your reflections on the experience?
I was hoping to go out on a real high in September so this has been a real dampener in that sense but it has been absolutely brilliant overall. I’ve loved it. When I joined we had nine employees and we have built up a team of 22 now and I’m gobsmacked every day at their dedication and commitment to triathlon. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with them.
It has been incredibly rewarding to see them come on. We were just coming out of the last recession when we took a lot of them on. We were getting fully qualified sports scientists applying for admin roles, 60-100 really highly qualified people applying for one job and they are now people delivering major projects and coming up with ideas. It’s been great for me.
I’ll be very sad to go but it was time. I said it when I first took the job that I would look to do two Olympic cycles, even if this one will go on through to next year now. Meeting targets is what I love and live by and we’ve been doing that. I’m staying in Irish sport on a consultancy basis and I’d love to keep my interest in triathlon in Ireland in some shape or form as well.
The Camogie Association was looking to build on a record All-Ireland final attendance and bed in widely welcomed trial playing rules when the pandemic struck. Brendan O’Brien spoke to Ard Stiúrthóir Sinéad McNulty as the sport adapts and prepares for its return to play.
What was the moment you realised that this was a challenge on an entirely different scale?
It was in March. I was in the Croke Park Hotel and about to meet Helen O’Rourke from LGFA and have a chat when we got a call that the government had announced the schools were closing. So putting in a full suspension of on-field activity from the 12th of March onwards was the moment, really.
Has anything in your past professional experience been a help in dealing with this?
I was working in the public sector when the Employee Control Framework [no renewal of contracts, no new posts] came in during the last crisis post-Celtic Tiger. At that point we had major changes in how we employ staff in the public sector and having to deal with that and restructure and look at budgets and operational plans and keeping facilities open. That is probably the closest I have been to something like this but it is not nearly on the same level.
Both are highly uncertain, changing landscapes. Does that help?
The difference with this is that you didn’t know what was coming day to day. In the financial crisis there was somebody somewhere who could plan the way out of it, or who had been in a financial crisis before. We are all going through a global pandemic for the first time and at the same time together, more or less.
There was no guide book or road map. We are already on our third iteration of the road map for Gaelic games. People look to you for answers to the questions they have and it is really challenging when you don’t have those answers and a lot of the same questions.
Where was the Camogie Association at when Covid-19 struck?
We were in a very exciting place. 2019 was a fantastic year for us. We had a record attendance at our All-Ireland finals. We had growth in membership, we had new clubs springing up and funding from Sport Ireland for our Mná programme. And we had record viewership between streaming and, most importantly, on TV. The Camogie final was the most watched women’s sports event of 2019 on TV. That’s where we were coming from.
We had a full team of staff for 2020 after having had a couple of vacancies in the last few years. We were launching our new National Development Plan in April at Congress and bringing sponsors on board across all of our competitions. So it was going to be a really exciting year.
We will still look back at the end of the year at things we have achieved, albeit that they are different from what we intended in January. Right now we are excited about people being back on the pitch, a return to some sort of normality.
When will the National Development Plan be launched and is it altered by the pandemic?
It hasn’t been formally launched. Given the uncertainty we said we would hold off on a formal launch. It’s hard to build up excitement about new sports activities when you’re not allowed to go outside the door.
The pandemic had started when we were finalising the plan itself so we did temper the ambitions for 2020 but it is still a plan for up to 2023 and all of the actions within remain absolutely valid despite Covid, like our move towards the online world which has been helped by Covid. We had 6-700 people taking part in training weeks online some weeks. That’s record levels for us.
How severe do you think the financial losses will be for your organisation and for the sport?
Right now we are looking at it with slightly more optimistic views that we were 6-8 weeks ago. Initially we were looking at a reduction of 80% of our revenue for the year. We have been impacted on grants, on gate receipts. We were really concerned about membership if we would not be in a position to deliver games during the year.
Right now it is looking at about a 40-45% reduction but that is based on the games programme being delivered to the end of the year. So we are reviewing it every week. The temporary wage subsidy scheme has been huge for us and has enabled us to keep all of our staff on board and keep working and engaging with our members. Without that we would be telling a different story today.
What happens if a second wave of Covid-19 materialises and sport is shut down again?
The reality is we don’t know. If you listen to what public health authorities are saying, they have developed a five-stage road map so it really depends on the scale of any second wave. We know what we need to do now and how do it, things like the health questionnaire and online resources.
There is talk of the reproduction rate being at 1 or even over and that is worrying. It would be hugely impactful and people’s confidence has been damaged. We have members through all age groups who have underlying conditions and don’t have a huge amount of confidence about going back.
They would be severely hit if there was a second wave. We have various sets of contingency plans from your best-case to your worst-case. We’ve already seen things that were unheard of, like moving our All-Ireland final into December. Who would have ever thought that?
When will the inter-county fixture list be published?
We plan to do the draw for our championship fixtures next week. The roadmap is very clear that inter-county training cannot recommence until the 14th of September. It’s up to us to ensure that the structure allows some games for everyone.
It’s not what we had planned at the start of the year but we are essentially trying to get nine months of activity into an eight-week programme and that is really challenging for everyone. The positive for a lot of people is a full club programme right up to the All-Ireland final which will take place next March.
There have been some tough decisions we have had to take about particular events and at age grades, and it has been really disappointing for people in those, but we have looked at it from every possible direction and come up with the best programme that we could to give as many games to as many people as possible. It’s not perfect but 2020 has been a really challenging year.
The decision to cancel the All-Ireland minor championship has been heavily criticised. Where is the association with regard to this now?
It was one of the tough decisions that was made and there were a number of factors that went into the decision-making process. We have received an appeal on that decision. That is being considered through the process and procedures so I can’t really talk about that any more at the minute.
Last year’s Galway-Kilkenny final came on the back of widely welcomed rule changes and it was the highest-scoring decider in 32 years. So how frustrating was it that the pandemic shut things down with further rule changes being trialled and the sport gaining momentum?
We had a very good conversation with all the stakeholders in advance of the trial rules. We were very excited. The first couple of weekends went super and then we had four weekends of wet weather warnings and an awful lot of matches cancelled. It was really frustrating not to see the full programme delivered but we look forward to trial rules in future competitions
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