Meeting with Minister Chambers
This afternoon IMAC President Brendan Dowling and Vice President Roy Baker took part in a two and a half hour virtual meeting with Minister for Sport Jack Chambers, the Sports Monitoring Group, 13 key National Governing Bodies of Sport and 6 Sports Representative bodies.
During the meeting the Minister thanked all the NGBs for the work done over the last year and, in particular, acknowledged the frustration of those involved in in-door sports due to the delay in an opening date being announced yet. Minister Chambers suggested that there was a lot of room for optimism at the moment and that he hoped that we would soon have a time-table for the phased re-opening of indoor sports.
The Minister noted that the definition of Elite Sport in regards to the Covid-19 Restrictions was under review and that we should continue our dialogue with Sport Ireland to explore the room for the inclusion of our sport in any expansion of the definition of Elite Athletes.
IMAC President Brendan Dowling echoed his concerns around the ongoing exclusion of indoor Sport and the need for another round of resilience funding to keep Clubs above water. Brendan then focused on the issues impacting on local, less commercially focused clubs, their continued access to local venues, the ongoing cost of maintaining our place in local parish, school or community halls, the cost of renewing yet another years insurance and the damage done by non-NGB affiliated Martial Arts clubs continuing to practice during lockdown.
Roy Baker, Vice President of IMAC, focused on the international issues impacting upon Irish Martial Artists inability to maintain their international standing so long as they cannot train – let alone compete. Roy stated that it was important that Irish Martial Arts were given the opportunity to prepare for the World Games and Combat Games next year at on equal footing to other countries. Roy also took the opportunity to underlined the risk of in-door sports losing members to out-door sports as, at this stage, people just want to be active and if only outdoor activities are available to them – then thats where they will go.
In wrapping up the Minister indicated that his plan is that the phased opening up of Sports will be measured in weeks rather than months. Whilst the vaccine programme is offering good reason to be optimistic – he wants to ensure, in so far as he can, that as each level of Sports opens up - it will be able to stay open. The Minister indicated that he would meet with the group again in May once the next range of Government announcements have been made.