With the Olympic Games and Paralympics just around the corner, the Irish Sports Council (ISC) yesterday announced individual grants for this year's crop of elite Irish athletes.

It will come as some comfort to a variety of sports people, many of whom had to wait until August last year before they received their total funding, that this year's allotments have been decided in February.

The increase in overall allocation to £1,104,000, in tandem with the early announcement, was welcomed as it comes on top of the £5.45 million budgeted for Olympic preparation and for the National Governing Bodies of sport (NGBs) for 2000.

The direct financial input through the carding scheme is designed to pay for training, coaching and competition expenses for individuals. Athletes are also entitled to free access to the sports medicine and science network.

Pat Duffy, of the National Coaching and Training Centre in Limerick, pointed out that Sonia O'Sullivan availed of extensive physiological examination in the wake of her disappointing efforts at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996. As a consequence, she now closely gauges her training using a heart monitor.

There is likely to be considerable attention given to how the ISC arrived at the various allocations. While athletics received over three times more than any other sport except rowing, only one athlete, O'Sullivan, qualified for the top grant (because of her considerable income from running, she receives a reduced amount).

Incredibly, Susan Smith-Walsh, an Olympic Games semi-finalist and World Championship finalist, falls into the category of "class two athlete". One wonders, despite Smith-Walsh's dip in form last season, just what level of success the ISC expects from Irish competitors.

O'Sullivan, the double cross country world champion and European 10,000 metres champion, appears to set the standards.

Rower Neville Maxwell falls into in the same bracket as Smith-Walsh. He missed an Olympic medal by the turn of a paddle in Atlanta, and has collected several World Championship medals including a silver last year. The standards set in some sports are incredibly high.

"Like any scheme it needs to be revised and we'll be doing that after the Olympic Games," said Pat O'Neill, the chairman of the ISC. "We want to have a commitment to continuous improvement.".

There seemed little doubt at the reception held in Dublin that the announcements are seen as a move forward. Since the carding scheme was introduced in May 1998, athletes have at least been afforded a mechanism and structure to apply for funding, which was not in place before.

Over that time, £3.1 million has been granted directly to athletes through the carding scheme. The Minister for Sport, Dr McDaid, outlined what he hoped that would achieve.

"I see how these athletes and their NGBs are being helped to focus on the Olympics and Paralympics, and now, through a mix of carding scheme grants and substantial NGB grants, we can help turn potential into performance," he said.