Donal Lenihan believes Ireland's bid to host the 2023 Rugby World Cup has fallen victim to a nuts-and-bolts evaluation that fails to consider factors that would see the Emerald Isle host the "best one there has been to date".
South Africa are expected to be awarded the showpiece after the findings of the technical review group published this morning favoured their bid.
Ireland, South Africa and France are all in the running and while a final decision will not be made until after the World Rugby council votes on 15 November, it's not looking good.
The technical review group assessed and scored each of the bids on five criteria: finance and tournament guarantees; venues and host cities; tournament infrastructure; vision and concept, and tournament organisation and schedule. Ireland scored the lowest of the three nations.
"To end up in third in the bidding process, I have to say I was hugely surprised," Lenihan told RTÉ 2fm's Game On.
"It does put us on the back foot. It's the first time there's ever been a technical review prior to the voting taking place so we don't know exactly what weighting it's going to carry.
"World Rugby, prior to the announcement, were very strong in saying,'look, given the fact that this was carried out by independent consultants, it should be adhered to by the various unions when we sit down to vote' but we'll just have to wait and see.
"I still see light at the end of the tunnel. I honestly feel if this technical review hadn't been carried out and it was left to the normal voting process then we'd be streets ahead of everyone else because those who know rugby know that Ireland would be able to host a magnificent event. The problem is, this was a technical review, it's all nuts and bolts, all figures."
One of the issues that damaged Ireland's assessment was the uncertainty around stadium infrastructure.
The report said that Ireland's proposed match venues "require considerable work" and indicated that this made the bid a "higher risk" proposition than its competitors.
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Lenihan admitted other countries may have more impressive arenas, but Ireland's grounds are more than capable of hosting tournament games.
"There's no question, if you stand outside Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney for example and compare to the brand new stadium in Cape Town that was built for the World Cup then you're not comparing apples with apples," he added.
"But go back to Rotorua and New Plymouth (in New Zealand) when Ireland played the USA and Russia. Those stadia had grassy banks. It lashed rain for both matches; you had people sitting on wet grass!
"If the criteria was applied for that tournament there's no way New Zealand would get it and on the basis of this technical review group they can forget about getting it again.
"Part of the ethos of World Rugby is to spread the gospel, to spread the tournament around the world. The problem now is if you go down the technical route, then in effect it's only countries like France, England and South Africa that have the capacity to host it. That's a big issue for me.
"I've been at all the World Cups in one capacity or another and there's no question in my mind that we would host the best there has been to date."
