Motor sport:The Circuit of Ireland rally planned for Easter weekend of next year has been cancelled due to a lack of sufficient funding. Last year's event, which was part of the International Rally Challenge series, proved a big success and drew a global television audience of close to nine million.
Rally director Bobby Willis admitted that he had to pull the plug on the event due to the lack of funding and the lack of time remaining to organise the event.
Willis said: “This is an extremely painful judgement for me to make and one that I do not enter into lightly. I had publicly expressed concern in October over funding for the 2013 Rally. We have received significant backing from Government but we were falling short of our full funding requirements and given the delay this has imposed it is now impossible to organise an international sporting event in less than three months.
“This is not the end for the Circuit of Ireland Rally and I, along with 700 volunteers which it takes to run the rally, will regroup and begin planning now for 2014.”