Northern Ireland-born athletes are entitled to represent either Ireland or Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as they are automatically entitled to the citizenship of both countries. As a result, athletes will tend to represent the National Olympic Committee of the nation to which their sport federation is aligned. The smaller competition pool will also see athletes choose to represent Ireland to ensure greater Olympic qualification chances, although athletes may also move in the opposite direction to increase medal chances, especially in team events. A number of athletes have represented both nations. This is on the same basis as at the Olympics.
At the first Paralympic Games in 1960 in Rome Ireland were one of 23 nations to enter athletes. The team finished 12th in the medals table which to this day remains the highest Ireland has ranked on the medal table. Both of Ireland's gold medals were won by Joan Horan. Horan won her medals in two different sports, one in the women's St. Nicholas Round open archery and one in the women's 25 m Crawl complete class 2 swimming event.[2][3][4] At the next games, hosted by Tokyo in 1964, two Irish athletes competed. This remains Ireland's only Summer Paralympics where no medals were earned.
The most medals won by Ireland at a Paralympic Games is 66. This was acheived at the 1984 Games hosted in New York and Stoke Mandeville. 20 of these medals were gold, 15 silver and 31 bronze. These are the most medals ever won at the games, making this the most successful Paralympic Games for Ireland. This was achieved with only 53 athletes on the Paralympic team that year.
The 1996 Summer Paralympics saw the biggest Paralympic team ever head to Atlanta. With 63 athletes competing in these games, Ireland was hoping for their biggest games yet. Dissapointingly for the Irish, 10 medals were won at these games.
At the 2008 Summer Paralympics, held in Beijing, Ireland won five medals in total, three of them gold. There was controversy over the participation of Derek Malone in the 7-a-side cerebral palsy football tournament. Malone, who had competed in the 800 m event at the Athens Paralympics was ruled as ineligible to compete by Games classification authorities on the grounds that his disability was not severe enough.[5][6]
Athletics is Ireland's highest achieving sport with more than 5x more medals won in Athletics than any other sport. Ireland have also been very successful in swimming with over 30 medals won in the sport.
The following table contains all medals won by athletes representing Ireland in the Paralympics. All medals have been won at the Summer Games. Ireland have never had a Paralympic team compete in the Winter Games.
The table is organised in chronological order, then by medal type (Gold, silver and bronze) and then by sport.
