David Humphreys believes Andy Farrell's sabbatical to coach the British and Irish Lions next year will bring more positives than negatives for his Ireland team.
Ireland head coach Farrell, who is under contract with the IRFU until after the 2027 Rugby World Cup, will step aside briefly following the November internationals to focus on the Lions tour of Australia, before returning to his post in August 2025.
Defence coach Simon Easterby is expected to be promoted to head coach on an interim basis. Easterby has dipped his toes in the water of the role previously when he was given responsibility for the Emerging Ireland tour of South Africa in 2022, which he will also do in September when they return for a three-game series in Bloemfontein.
New IRFU performance director Humphreys says no decision has been made on who will take charge of Ireland next season.
"It's a very exciting opportunity for someone to step in," Humphreys (below) said.
The former Ireland and Ulster out-half, who recently took over from David Nucifora as the head of high performance in the union, added that Farrell will be involved in deciding who will be given the keys to the team next season.
"You talk about coaching succession, this will give us a chance to bring someone else in at a very important time for the national team and test them in probably the highest pressure environment in the Six Nations.
"Andy's away for six months but he'll still be very much involved in that process of who's going to come in.
"After South Africa, we're planning to sit down and look at how we're going to run the next season."
If, as expected, Easterby does move up the ladder, it will leave the Ireland coaching ticket one body short for next year's Six Nations and their summer tour, with Paul O'Connell, John Fogarty and incoming attack coach Andrew Goodman set to be on the coaching team.
And Humphreys says they are open to drafting in a coach from one of the four provinces to assist in the Six Nations.
"That will be part of the discussion of course.
"Once we knew who's coming to come in and fill Andy's shoes on an interim basis, we'll then look at the overall make-up of the coaching team.
If that requires some other expertise, we'll work at whether that comes from within or outside. That's decision for a few months' time," he added.
The Ireland men's team enjoyed considerable success during Nucifora's decade at the union, winning four Six Nations titles - two of which were Grand Slams - while they also won Test series in New Zealand and Australia, however they failed to break new ground at the Rugby World Cup, with quarter-final exits in 2015, 2019 and 2023.
And Humphreys, who played in two World Cups with Ireland, says they will be striving to break their quarter-final barrier in Australia in 2027.
'It's a question which has been posed since all of us as rugby players... I remember watching David Kirk playing at the World Cup [for New Zealand] in 1987. Since then, any of us who have come through, that's been the aspiration.
"We all want to be part of an organisation of a team that wins the World Cup. We will be leaving no stone unturned in trying to do that.
"If you look back to last November, we couldn't really have had a better preparation [for the World Cup] so everything we did gave us a really good chance. In the end, we lost to New Zealand by one score.
"We came in [to the tournament] 17 games unbeaten and we had very few injuries in the competition. So, to me, that's not a negative. That's sport.
"Of course we want to win it but the nature of sport is sometimes you just don't win," Humphreys said.
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