Eoin Sheahan

So the grant system is clearly failing jobs on boxing club.

as much as we can working with local authorities and working with schools for example we want to get to a situation whereby we can foster that collaboration that gives them more stability I think as well there is a view within sports like boxing that they haven't been given a fair crack of the whip when it comes to sports capital funding like you look at the last round of funding

And you compare it to Gaelic Games, which got 96 million euro, the most by distance when it comes to a sport by sport categorisation.

So the GAA is 25 times bigger than boxing in terms of members, but it got 96 times the funding of GAA, Gaelic Games, in the last round of funding.

Something's not adding up there.

This government, and it's no different to previous governments, leans towards Gaelic games in an unreasonably favourite manner.

Like too much favouritism being shown in terms of how much funding has been pumped into it.

Like you look at the budget last year and sure, there's 1.5 million euro for high performance athletes, which covers a lot of different sports.

I'm sure boxers are part of that.

When it comes to specific sports, you've got 727,000 euro to the IRFU, 983,000 euro to the GAA specifically.

in the budget.

I've just outlined what's happened there in the last Sports Capital Grants funding, the favouritism shown to the GEA, you could argue, in that round of sports funding.

And we're talking about an organisation right now that the conversation is happening around GEA Plus and how much revenue it's taking in through that stream.

It's an organisation that's having Leeds versus Manchester United taking place in Crowe Park this summer.

It's a

fairly flush organisation in terms of what it's bringing in.

And you could definitely make the case that it requires less help than the majority of boxing clubs, for example, around the country.

Would you not be better off throwing in a few hundred thousand euro to less advantaged sports at the next budget compared to how well organised the GAA is in terms of grabbing this sports capital grant funding?

Just one other thing that I wanted to ask you about was just on, again, going back to the budget last year, because I think it's the first time I've spoken to you since then, just the €3 million allocated to this year's budget for League of Ireland academies.

I'm sure there's a lot of work happening in the background on that.