Ireland's gold medal-winning Paralympian Darragh McDonald has announced his retirement from competitive swimming, citing major problems with Paralympics Ireland over funding and support.
McDonald, who won gold in the 400m freestyle at London 2012 and bronze at the World Championships last July, hit out at Paralympics Ireland and claimed that "two years of countless broken deals" had been behind his decision.
The 21-year-old has already met the qualifying time to compete in the 2016 Paralympics in Rio, but claimed that even with that, he could not be sure if he would be sent to Brazil.
Speaking exclusively to RTÉ Sport, McDonald said: "I had a responsibility to the tax payer. The tax payer has been funding me for six or seven years now and I want people to know exactly what happened.
"I'm not just some lad who decided to pack it in..... I packed it in because there was literally, absolutely no other choice.
"Over the last couple of years we've had serious issues with both the Paralympic Council of Ireland and the Sports Council in terms of being sent to major competitions and funding issues as well.
"I was left in the position where I'm sitting in the top three in the world rankings, I've got a qualifying time for Rio, but at the end of the day I'm not sure if I'm going."
Paralympics Ireland chief executive Liam Harbison insisted that the sports body had done all they could to support McDonald and that they regret his decision.
"I don't think it reflects poorly on Paralympics Ireland. We tried our best to support Darragh and we've engaged in a dialogue," he said.
"Darragh has obviously taken this decision himself, I'd rather he hadn't and he continued to talk and work with us but we are where we are."
