World Rugby CEO Brett Gosper says criticism from the IRFU over the process which led to South Africa being recommended as host nation for 2023 World Cup, is unfounded.
Ireland scored the lowest in the independent review with South Africa recommended as the host nation, ahead of France.
The French were the first to bemoan the findings of the expert review into the suitability of the bidding nations, the IRFU also wrote to World Rugby to raise concerns about aspects of the process.
The French criticism was more pointed, the president of their rugby union, Bernard Laporte described the report as "laughable", "incompetent" and "inaccurate".
Voting nations will now decide who will host the 2023 World Cup by casting their ballots before the World Rugby Council on November 15th.
In an interview with Sky Sports Gosper insisted that everything was above board:
“Ireland is incredibly competitive in this process. If they consider themselves a small country, they are in the game and will continue to be.
“There's a vote to come and we'll see what happens with that but certainly this is now the third biggest global sporting event on the planet and it does require scale and it does require facilitates that are world class.
“In this particular contest you've got two countries that very recently have hosted some world-class events beyond Rugby World Cup and have demonstrated and been experienced in deploying their talents around events such as this.
"It's a tough competition, it's disappointing that there has been some comments made that we don't believe are accurate and reflect the accuracy of our report.
"We have official channels which they are using to ask us on every element of our report, why they scored it a certain way, were there errors, were there issues, and we're in the process of answering those questions.
"We're very confident that our process actually is robust and stands up to any scrutiny.
"Lets be fair, all three of these countries can put on a magnificent World Cup, everyone qualifies in that sense, however there has been a points winner and that is the recommendation of the World Rugby board.
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