A RECURRING theme in recent Olympic Games is whether national teams provided value for money to the tax-paying citizens.

The perceived value of a gold, silver or bronze medal varies from country to country, and the Irish Sports Council would argue strongly that there are more dimensions to funding sport than the medals that accrue.

But in the light of the past fortnight in Beijing, and even by the most arbitrary criteria of success, the Irish boxers appear to have very wisely used the Performance Plan's €2.16 million spent on them over the four-year cycle since 2004. A crude evaluation suggests we paid less than €1 million per Olympic medal.

That two bronze and a silver medal are the fruit of such a small fraction of the total €34 million spent over the same period on all the high-performance sports, including the Paralympic sports, appears an excellent return.

In 2005 Irish boxing received €400,000, in 2006 €527,000 and in 2007 €615,000.

This year the funding was bumped up to €620,000. Most of that money would have gone into training camps, travel and support services, aspects of the sport that are relatively inexpensive.

Compared to the cost of sending a horse or a yacht to Beijing or a European or world championship qualifying event, the boxers are by their nature cost effective and low-maintenance.

The high-performance carding scheme, which rewards athletes for proven success, handed out €123,000 to Sunday's silver medallist, Ken Egan, over the four years since Athens.

The carding scheme is essentially a salary and the athletes are not expected to use that money to pay for such things as equipment or medical treatment or travel.

It is in place to allow them to become financially independent in order to focus on the increasingly difficult training and preparation for competition.

That money is in addition to the €2.16 million of the Performance Plan. This year's and last year's Carding Scheme provided Egan with €40,000 each year, while he received €20,000 in 2006 and €22,900 in 2005.

Darren Sutherland, who was a bronze medallist last weekend and has announced he is turning professional, received €65,000 over the four-year Olympic cycle.

In 2005, he got €6,000 and for the last three years has received €20,000 each year.

Belfast's Paddy Barnes, who came last into the system late and also took bronze from Beijing, was awarded €20,000 this year and nothing last year, though he received €5,000 in 2006.

We had two other boxers in Beijing. John Joe Joyce received €20,000 this year, his biggest grant in four years. John Joe Nevin, who has been in the scheme for only two years, was awarded €20,000 this year and €5,000 in 2007.

In total the five Olympic boxers received €279,000 in grants over the four years, while the sport of boxing at large received the above-mentioned €2.16 million.

Rounded off, and excluding some of the boxers who were on grants but did not make it to China, those figures tally to less than €2.5 million for three Olympic medals.

It is a rough measure of the cost of providing a medal but clearly it shows boxing has given far more value for money than other sports.

The British, for example, estimated it cost €15 million for each of their gold medals in Beijing.

In the four years since Athens, and without factoring in the carding scheme, athletics received €3.1 million, badminton €558,000, canoeing €1.3 million, cycling €1.4 million, fencing €103,000, shooting €497,000, sailing €1.9 million, the same amount of money received by the Olympic Council of Ireland over the same period, swimming €1.1 million and equestrian sport €2.1 million.

In the overall contest of Irish sport, the boxers were once again unbelievable value both in the ring and at the bank.