Yesterday Sport Ireland announced that Athletics Ireland are set to receive a significant increase of over €200,000 per year in funding for their high-performance programme.
Although not the biggest "winners" post-Paris, the gap between athletics and rowing has closed slightly and the sport is again the third highest funded high-performance programme in the country.
It also falls nicely at the end of the most successful indoor season ever for the sport, a typical time of reflection and thinking about "what's next?" in sport.
It is what Rob Heffernan was already thinking before the curtain closed on RTÉ’s coverage of the European Indoor Championships in March, such are the traits of highly successful athletes.
The Olympic medallist expressed his "fury" about the direction of the sport and concerns about not being able to realise the potential of talented youngsters.
"It’s not just a band aid when you get somebody winning a medal and they are getting paraded around everywhere, that there is substance to it and a conveyor belt… It makes me furious.
"We have so much passion about sport it just needs to be directed correctly," Heffernan explained.
'It infuriates me' - Rob Heffernan and Derval O'Rourke on the shortfall in athletic facilities around the country
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) March 9, 2025
Watch live on @RTE2 and @RTEplayer #Apeldoorn2025 #IrishAthletics #rtesport pic.twitter.com/z0HXdYq3NV
After Heffernan’s comments, Kate O’Connor went on to win a second medal, the first global indoor medal in 19 years, is that not testament enough that maybe Irish athletics is doing something right?
With the recently announced funding boost the scope to do more will be greater but may not help to put Heffernan’s concerns to bed.
The money going directly into athletes’ pockets has also increased, international carding has boosted the level of funding for individual athletes in Ireland to a record €4.5 million, with changes to support for relay members in athletics the most eye catching on the list.
For the first time, relay athletes are being funded to the same level as individual performers.
Sharlene Mawdsley, Sophie Becker and Chris O’Donnell will all benefit from the change of tack, believed to have come directly from Sport Ireland, and are set to receive €40,000 each in 2025. Becker is arguably the biggest winner, going from relay funding to the full whack.
When you put into perspective that multiple individual European medal-winning Mark English will receive a €15,000 cut to his funding this year, it does possibly represent a shift in the value of the relay events at the national sporting body.
The only Paris Olympian to receive no Sport Ireland carding is Jodie McCann, but she could get something from Athletics Ireland’s "discretionary" system.
Becker’s fellow European silver-medallist Phil Healy is the only member of the Olympic fourth-place finishing women’s team that won’t be on top dollar and could rightly feel slighted. Healy will be in line to receive a chunk of the €120,000 allocated for both relays, but the decision making isn't clear in the Becker v Healy debate on where individual performance seems to have played a factor.
After Paris, even without claiming a medal, there were cries from the public of "they better remember this in a few months", with reference to the financial decision-making that occurs post Games.
It seems they have listened, but as Heffernan described, throwing money at athletes who are successful isn’t always what’s best for the future of the sport.
"I love athletics, so when we do well, we do have to promote it… but I know even when I won the Worlds in 2013 the following year money is thrown at you funding wise… just because I did well you can justify a spend."
There also must be brave decision-making when it comes to attaining the best results, which is what this looks like.
The argument for what approach is best, funding less athletes with more or more athletes with less, will rage on and unfortunately, rarely there is a balanced conversation on the topic due to people’s own bias.
In a recent episode of a sport and coaching podcast, The Sideline Live, Team Ireland’s Chef de Mission, Gavin Noble explained that he felt having a targeted approach to funding was more suitable in a small nation like Ireland.
"It’s a 12-year plan, an eight-year plan of where we want to be and what sort of country we want to be and in order to do that it comes down to the investment level in sport…
"I’m a big believer in if I have 20 athletes and throw them against the wall and train the sh*t out of them one of them will be good… In Ireland we don’t have the numbers.
"It’s about how we actually make a decision. 'I’m going to support three or four athletes really well,’ but if you dilute that down and have 14 or 15 on funding then it’s just a deletion of kind," explained Noble.
Looking at the current talent pool coming through in the women’s 4x400m squads, it is fair to express some concern about the future, but as Noble explains, we don’t have or need that luxury in Ireland.
As we saw at this month’s Europeans, two injuries, one illness and Rhasidat Adeleke quite rightly choosing to sit out the season after a very busy 2024 had Ireland drop from fourth in the world to a flagging sixth in Europe in the women-only event.
Both the newly top-funded relay athletes didn’t make the start line. Becker through injury and no word on O’Donnell, who hasn’t raced in 2025 but has expressed before he isn’t a fan of running indoors. Both may unfortunately feel under more scrutiny, such is the pressure that comes with being on top dollar.
While it is hard to argue that more money for individual athletes is anything but positive, Heffernan did raise concerns from his own generation about the use of funds issued to individuals, with governing bodies having little say on what is done with it.
"I have been at the receiving end of not having the support, I think things have to be done right. When I was on top funding there was no accountability on you for the year. There is a lot we can do, it’s not just throwing money at stuff either there has to be bigger thinking," he said.
Before the outcry begins as to why O’Connor, English and Healy won’t receive top tier funding this year despite their recent medal haul, an explanation.
Unfortunately, the current Sport Ireland governed system is not responsive to allow for funding increases when a medal is achieved. It also does not follow the seasons of each individual sport, which does land athletes and high performance directors with challenges.
The deadline for submission of applications for the 2025 carding scheme closed for athletics at the start of December.
By that time English, O’Connor and Healy were all "just" Olympians, with no medals between them in the 2024 season, it was deemed they didn’t meet the criteria for top podium funding. Their time will come.
