Paralympics Ireland chief executive Stephen McNamara says Para athletes should not be sidelined in terms of funding or ignored during the award season over the coming months.
Team Ireland return to Dublin on Monday following the Paralympics in Paris, but McNamara is keen that the end of the Games does not represent an end of public or Government interest in Para athletes until LA spins around in four years.
“We need to make sure we are on the minds, in the debate, and at the table for all of these conversations,” McNamara said in Paris.
“It is that area of equality that we are still striving for. The big thing for us now is where do we actually rank in the public consciousness and in the sports media and in the wider sporting community after this summer of sport?
Paralympics: Complete day-by-day guide to the Irish athletes in action in Paris
Sport Ireland gets budget bump to build on Paris success
After losing his leg to an Israeli sniper, Alaa al-Dali found his way out of Gaza and into the World Championships
An Irishwoman in Paris: I feel a magnetic drag to be Franco-Irish and participate in French politics
“We have just had an athlete [Katie-George Dunlevy] win her eighth medal, eight medals across three different Games on the bike, which is just phenomenal. And she’ll go to award ceremonies now and she’ll go there knowing she is not going to win them because somebody else has always won after every Paralympic and Olympic cycle.
“That is not taking anything from those Olympic athletes. But why is it that Jason Smyth went to all those RTÉ Sports awards and never came away with one until he retired? Why is that?
“His achievement was phenomenal. If that was a non-disabled athlete that ran that fast and won that number of medals, they would have won it multiple times.
“This year, we need to understand why is it that going into those rooms and going into awards that they are just going in to make up the numbers? There is a bit of box-ticking there.
“This will be tough because what Daniel [Wiffen] did was phenomenal, what Kellie [Harrington] did was phenomenal.
“But they will go into those rooms knowing they will have a fair crack at this, whereas our athletes will go in there knowing, ‘I’ll get a nice dinner out of it, we’ll get dressed up, we’ll get a nice hotel for the night, we’ll be on the TV again’, which is really important, and then the able-bodied athlete will win it.”
Winning, of course, is the currency of elite sport and Team Ireland return home with six medals from Paris – one gold (Dunlevy and Linda Kelly), three silver (Dunlevy and Kelly, Dunlevy and Eve McCrystal, Róisín Ní Riain) and two bronze (Ní Riain and Orla Comerford). There were also six fourth-place finishes for Ireland.
Prior to the Games, McNamara had indicated the hope was for between eight to 10 medals.
“The targets are set in conjunction with Sport Ireland,” said McNamara.
“We have no problem with medal targets, they are in there, they have been in the strategic plan for Sport Ireland and for ourselves since 2019, so they are there. We knew we had eight to 10 athletes that were in the hunt for a medal, even if that was a bronze medal.
“The reality is the margins are that tight. Yes, it’s six, and we’ll own that, but definitely we were in the hunt for others.”
Of the 35-strong team in Paris, 22 athletes received funding through the international carding scheme – which is scaled. Podium hopeful athletes such as Dunlevy are on the top end at €40,000 and it drops thereafter to €25,000 and then the lower layer of €18,000.
“Sport Ireland, if they had the money, would give more to all of the athletes and to more of the athletes. They’d look across more sports,” said McNamara.
“There has to be and should be hard decisions in relation to where we are with sport.
“We need to look at how do we get more? There is always a need for more. Sport Ireland understand that. How do we ensure a fair crack of the whip in relation to where the funding goes?
“That is across not just Paralympic and Olympic sport, but across all sport. We have huge pride in all of our big three sports. And they take up a lot of the funding. There needs to be an examination of how do we get more options for kids to play different sports, how do we fund that to make that happen? Not every kid will want to play GAA, rugby or football.
“But where can we then invest the funding to a fair degree in relation to that?
“The Australian sports minister identified that 15 per cent of funding went to disability sport and she was absolutely horrified. Her goal is to get it to 50 per cent – 50 per cent into disability, 50 per cent into non-disabled sports.
“They have said, ‘15 per cent is not good enough, 30 per cent is where we are now, we want to get to 50 per cent.’ That is really brave.”
