IN A dramatic escalation of the problems currently engulfing Irish athletics, BLE officials have suspended their international programme because of a lack of funding.
The decision follows their refusal to sign up to a document which, they maintain, infringes their rights as the sole licensed agency for international athletics in the Republic.
In an attempt to accelerate his campaign for a merger of BLE, the National Athletics and Cultural Association (NACA) and the Irish Schools Athletics Association, the Minister for Sport, Dr McDaid, is linking grants for the current year to agreement on a paper setting out the projected programmes of the three bodies.
The NACA application is understood to request funding for staging several specified international events, including Ras na hEireann at Dunleer, Co Louth. BLE contend that, by signing up to the McDaid agreement, they would, in effect, forfeit their status as the governing body for international athletics in the Republic.
In the new, expanded format of athletics in this country, all three organisations are now almost wholly dependant on grant aid to finance their operations. Last year, BLE, the biggest of the three, was subsidised to the extent of £267,000 in addition to the payments made directly to those who qualify for the elite athletes' scheme.
Now, with the Minister withholding the funding due to come on stream last month, BLE claim they do not have the resources to fund either international competition or training camps.
Ironically, the first event likely to be hit is the World Cross Country championship in Belfast next month, which is returning to Ireland after 20 years. In spite of the modest transportation costs, BLE estimate it will cost £7,000 to finance teams in all six races on the programme.
Also deleted will be the world indoor track championships in Japan next month, the team for which was scheduled to be announced on Monday. And unless there is a volte face, the training camp planned for South Africa in April will also be abandoned. That was designed to provide athletes in line for selection for the world outdoor championships at Seville in August with warm weather training. Now, in common with everything else on BLE's programme, it is in imminent danger of being aborted.
Inevitably, the move will be seen as heightening the stakes as the talks on unification, which have been in progress irregularly since 1985, reach sticking point and the two main players are required to settle differences which have divided them for more than 60 years.
BLE claim that McDaid is, consciously or otherwise, putting Ireland's Olympic hopes at risk in his attempt to fast forward negotiations which, historically, have proved the most complex in Irish sport.
And they point to the fact that, as recently as last Sunday, the Minister indicated that 2001 would be the cut-off point for applications for separate funding. Now, they contend, in his attempt to expedite the process he is in danger of wrecking it.
Significant progress on peripheral issues has been made in the talks. But as yet, the question of 32 county sovereignty which drove the NACA into international exile in 1935 has yet to be resolved.
As the organisation originally responsible for the administration of athletics in Ireland, they insist they will not be downgraded in any new package which emerges for the sport.
Meanwhile, BLE are making much of the fact that the impasse on funding comes at the worst possible time for those athletes preparing for the Olympic Games in Sydney in September of next year.
"It is widely acknowledged in sport that the pre-Olympic year is the most vital in the four-year cycle," said a spokesman. "Immediately after the Atlanta Games, we put in place a four-year programme to ensure that our athletes would be properly prepared for Sydney.
"Much has already been achieved in that goal, but to withhold funding at this point would undo all the earlier work and put the whole programme in jeopardy."
