Thanks for this salmson, that's a great help. I thought it might be a long shot alright but thought that someone on here might have the expertise to track down the info that I can't seem to find!

There's no hard answer for that and you'll do very well to get hard sources:

Parity of contract support: It's my understanding that the IRFU contract support was equalised for the 2011/2012 season after a review duringthe 2010/2011 season (which ended our development province status, led to the PGB etc.).

Parity of coaching & facilities: Pat raised this during his first season, leading to the addition of 2 senior squad coaches, and major investments in gym equipment and analysis software. These would have been online for the start of last season (14/15).

Caveat 1: The other three provinces also have 4/5 players on central contracts which do not come out of their provincial pots. Given that these contracts are all in the 250K-600K range, the notion that the IRFU has given us parity of funding is nonsense.

Caveat 2: Ulster and Leinster have bigger attendance and commercial revenues than us which boosts their funding way beyond ours. Conversely Munster are in a hole financially. So equality of IRFU funding wouldn't mean equality of budget obviously.

Would anyone on here be able to tell me when the IRFU gave Connacht parity of funding with the other provinces? A source for this would also be greatly appreciated.