Olympic Council of Ireland

Olympic Council of Ireland

Olympic Council of Ireland logo
Country/Region	Ireland
Code	IRL
Created	April/May 1920
Recognized	3 June 1922
Continental Association	EOC
Headquarters	Dublin, Ireland
President	Sarah Keane
Secretary General	Sarah O’Shea
Website	www.olympicsport.ie

The Olympic Council of Ireland or OCI (Irish: Comhairle Oilimpeach na hÉireann) (called the Irish Olympic Council until 1952) is the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of the Republic of Ireland, although athletes from Northern Ireland may also participate in it, as well as in the Great Britain and Northern Ireland Olympic team. Its mission statement is "To manage and enhance the performance of Team Ireland at Olympic Games whilst developing the Olympic Movement in Ireland."

The Irish Olympic Council was founded in 1920, while the Irish War of Independence was pitting the Irish Republic proclaimed by Sinn Féin against the Dublin Castle administration of the United Kingdom. John J. Keane, who was the head of the athletics committee of the Gaelic Athletic Association, met Sinn Féin leaders Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins in Vaughan's Hotel, Parnell Square, in April to discuss the possibility of a separate Irish team at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp. The founding Council members were mostly Irish republican or nationalist political leaders. Keane wrote to the Baron de Coubertin, who was sympathetic, but the Belgian organising committee deferred to the British Olympic Association (BOA), which took the unionist view that Irish competitors should be part of the British team. By August, Keane was proposing that a separate Irish delegation should march under the Union Jack, on the model of Finland at the 1912 Summer Olympics when part of the Russian Empire. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to "suspend all decision until the moment when the Irish question would be solved politically". Keane applied again in April 1922, during the provisional administration that was preparing for the formal establishment of the Irish Free State that December. De Coubertin was worried that the Tailteann Games were intended to rival the Olympics, and the BOA's delegate was unsure of the political outlook in the buildup to the Irish Civil War. Keane allayed these worries such that the Irish Olympic Council was affiliated to the IOC on 3 June 1922.