IF the Minister for Sport, Bernard Allen was hoping to persuade people of the advantages of carrying out the policies outlined in Targeting Sporting Change in Ireland, then the document's launch must have been a considerable disappointment to him.
In any situation in which change on this sort of scale is envisaged it would seem desirable to have had as much open discussion as possible.
Yet, in this ease, the launch involved a private press briefing followed by a formal launch at which no questions were allowed while, to judge by the reports in Thursday's newspapers, it appeared that the Minister's colleagues in government were anxious that they had not been given an adequate opportunity to discuss such a dramatic shift in policy either.
Hardly an auspicious start for a document that is intended to herald a new dawn for Irish sport. Unfortunately, that is not where the disappointments end.
Most significant amongst the document's shortcomings is the manner in which it addresses the question of funding. While it is widely known that the current government and others before it have reneged on the original commitment to allocate 55 per cent of National Lottery funds to sport, there is nothing here to suggest that things are going to change for the better in a significant way.
No firm commitments are given on future spending and, while a figure of 25 per cent of Lottery funding is mentioned, what we are offered in an area of central importance to the credibility of the entire document are no more than the aspirations of the plan's authors.
If the figure of 25 per cent of Lottery funding was a concrete proposal there would, at least, be the basis for a debate. But we are left with nothing more than aspirations, and thus reduced to speculation.
One figure that does seem to carry some weight is the proposed £500,000 over the three years which is to be set aside to establish new structures aimed at administering the distribution of grants to leading athletes and raising funds to supplement those given by the government. The Olympic Council of Ireland currently fulfils precisely this role within Irish sport but costs, at £90,000 per annum, about half as much.
This sums up the really central problem with the report. It appears to have been constructed around the idea of a shift away from the use of the OCI as a method of funding and administration while being unable, as far as I can make out, to come up with any significant ways of improving on a system which, in recent years, has been shown to work quite effectively.
Take, as another example, the document's proposal to establish a co-ordinated sports science and medical support network at the National Coaching and Training Centre in Limerick. These facilities have already existed for some years - a complete, advanced, medical service for Olympic athletes is operated by the Blackrock Clinic in conjunction with the Mater Hospital.
The system is supported by a commission of medical consultants and personnel. The service is economic due to the voluntary commitment of the medical profession to the interests of Irish sport and the OCI has a substantial investment in medical equipment which was acquired for the purposes of servicing the medical scheme. Yet implementation of the Allen Plan would result in duplication and inefficient use of the limited funds available.
Sadly, Minister Allen's strategy has ignored current developments in administration, structure and organisation for Olympic sports, while the attempt to subsume the Olympic Council of Ireland into a State controlled body called in his proposals the "High Performance Advisory Committee" seem to indicate a fundamental misjudgment of the nature of the Olympic movement.
Those sort of errors might have been forgivable if there had been a pressing demand for a change of direction. Instead, we have enjoyed more success at the last two Olympiads than ever before, there is general satisfaction amongst the 27 National Governing Bodies, that the system of funding has gradually been improving and neighbouring countries are modelling their future plans on our current structures after recognising the virtues of our system. We, however, appear to pursuing an altogether different agenda.
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