Sport

Sport Ireland increases core funding offered to national governing bodies

Government commits to an increase of €1.3 million offered to the day-to-day running of Irish sporting organisations for 2024

Sport Ireland has announced an increase in the core funding offered to sporting governing bodies. Photograph: Donall Farmer/Inpho

Ian O'Riordan
Thu Mar 21 2024 - 13:58

There has been a healthy rise in the annual payday for the 58 National Governing Bodies (NGB’s) of Irish sport, a total allocation of €17.3 million for 2024 announced by the Government on Wednesday.

This represents an increase of €1.3m on the 2023 figure, a further investment of €11.4m allocated across the network of 29 Local Sports Partnerships (LSPs) bringing the total core funding distributed through Sport Ireland to just under €30m.

As with recent years, the top five highest funded NGB’s are Special Olympics Ireland (€1.6m), Athletics Ireland (€1.23m), Swim Ireland (€1.175m), Horse Sport Ireland (€1.07m) and Basketball Ireland (€840,000).

The NGB’s for the three major team sports – the GAA, the IRFU and the FAI – receive separate Government allocations towards their core funding.

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It means overall core funding to NGB’s has increased by 60 per cent since 2018, from €10.8m to €17.3m.

This comes in addition to Sport Ireland’s high performance funding announced last month, which for the last year of the Paris Olympic cycle came with an additional investment of €25 million.

That brought total investment in the Paris cycle for those 19 NGBs up to €89 million, starting in 2021, a substantial increase on the €59 million which was invested in the Tokyo cycle.

“The NGBs of sport and the Local Sports Partnerships are at the heart of Irish sport and are key to achieving our aim of increasing participation in sport across the population,” said Catherine Martin, Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

[ Irish rowers win big as Sport Ireland announces record high performance investment ]

“The sport sector has proven itself to be a resilient and vibrant sector, continuing to deliver increased opportunities for people to participate in sport despite the challenges of recent years. The Government’s increased investment in core funding for 2024, and in recent years, will assist in ensuring the long-term sustainability of our sporting organisations.”

Crucially, NGBs who have not obtained the target of 40 per cent gender balance on their boards will only be permitted to draw down 50 per cent of their 2024 funding allocation from Sport Ireland until such time as they reach the 40 per cent target. Sport Ireland will continue to provide support to NGBs towards achieving the target of 40 per cent, and will monitor and report on progress.

“Sport Ireland welcomes this additional investment and is confident the NGBs, LSPs and Funded Bodies will continue to play a vital role as we enter the latter stages of the Government’s National Sports Policy,” said Dr Una May, Chief Executive of Sport Ireland.

Rowing Ireland last month topped the high performance investment with €1,093,334 for 2024 (€3,900,000 for the Paris Olympic cycle) ahead of Paralympics Ireland (€1,000,000/€3,700,000), the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (€965,000/€3,500,000) and Athletics Ireland (€841,666/€3,365,000)

Ian O'Riordan

Ian O'Riordan

Ian O'Riordan is an Irish Times sports journalist writing on athletics

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