The Rás, Tour of Ulster, Tour of the North, Rás Mumhan, Junior Tour and others are all facing Cycling Ireland cuts that would threaten their future.
There are fears for the future of a number of major events on the domestic road calendar, with the board of Cycling Ireland meeting to consider cuts to the funding it has provide to them.
Among those road races part-funded from the budget now under review are the An Post Rás, Tour of Ulster, Tour of the North, Kerry Group Rás Mumhan, Rás na n'Og, Junior Tour of Ireland and An Post Rás na mBan.
The events are made possible each year with the help of sums allocated to them from Cycling Ireland’s race grant funding, which has reached €70,000 annually in recent years.
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While most of the races have their own sponsors and operate their own budgets, the extra funding provided by the federation is key to maintaining them in their current form.
Any serious reduction in funding would likely see the cancellation of some events, many of whom have only barely survived the economic down turn.
The Tour of the North was very nearly lost this year due to a funding shortfall. Even the smallest of cuts to races like it could be devastating.
Cycling Ireland confirmed a board meeting was scheduled to take place tonight, Friday.
But the federation was not in a position to comment further on any possible reduction to the financial aid it has allocated to races for many years.
However, stickybottle understands the board meeting due to take place this evening would see board members consider cuts to the funding.
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In recent years Cycling Ireland has distributed the grants directly to the events after considering applications from race organisers. Previously the Irish Sports Council distributed the funding.
The reasons for the possible reductions in funding are not yet clear, though the federation will likely make a statement after the board meeting this evening.
The federation’s membership has never been higher, and has now well exceeded 20,000.
This is a five to six fold increase on numbers involved during the previous boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s when Sean Kelly and Stephen Roche made the sport very popular.
The Junior Tour is one of the races with its own sponsor that is still reliant on the funding it gets from Cycling Ireland (Photo: Stephen McMahon - Sportsfile)
Membership fees have increased hugely towards an historic marker of €1 million annually.
The federation’s annual accounts for the full year last year were not available at the time of writing. However, at last year’s annual general meeting, Cycling Ireland revealed membership income of €865,467 in the first eight months of the year, when total income reached €1.367 million.
The national body funding from the Irish Sports Council to Cycling Ireland in 2012, the latest year for which figures were available, was €315,000. This was slightly higher than the €304,000 allocated in 2008 just before the recession.
The figures do not include other smaller allocations from the sports council, which gave Cycling Ireland a total of €438,000 last year in the period to August.
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