A TREMENDOUS amount of sport is played in this Island, much of it to a very high standard. You have to look no further than the recent achievements of the Jersey Rugby Football Club or badminton star Elizabeth Cann to appreciate that some of our sportsmen and women are capable of competing at very high levels indeed.

If, however, our sports enthusiasts were restricted to competing among themselves inside the Island, it is most unlikely that they would reach the high standards of performance that we are now witnessing. It is essential that our teams and individuals are able to test their skills and stamina against competition in the UK and elsewhere.

All those who take an interest in sport – as competitors, coaches, spectators, or even those who, at arm’s length, see it as a fundamentally good thing – will be pleased and relieved that Education Minister Pat Ryan has decided that the swingeing cut in the public funds available to the Sports Advisory Council to allocate grants to teams and individuals travelling away from the Island is to be reduced. The council was to have received only £38,000 this year – compared with £176,000 last year – but the sum has been revised upwards to £122,500.

The revised sum will no doubt allow many sports people to attend events which would have been beyond their means had Deputy Ryan insisted on the planned cut. However, everyone concerned should be aware that the increase in funding represents only a reprieve and not a solution of the problem.

The Education, Sport and Culture department has, in fact, lost £160,000 of its budget for sports travel, so this year’s restoration of funds is based on a shuffling exercise. Grants may be maintained at an acceptable level, but economies will be made elsewhere.

Like it or not, Deputy Ryan’s dilemma – and the solution he and his advisers have devised – can be seen as a model of what is happening throughout the public sector. In this period of necessary austerity, all ministers and all departments are having to identify economies and in many cases they are robbing Peter to pay Paul in the face of reduced resources.

In the case of sports travel grants, Deputy Ryan has so far managed to reach a satisfactory compromise, but in the near future he and his ministerial colleagues will face many similar challenges, some of them much tougher than the one which has now been temporarily resolved.