Is Irish Epee in decline?

I just posted this little article to the Irish fencing forum:

Irish Fencing :: View topic - Is Irish Epee in decline?:

Way back, when I was a teenager, and subsequently, when I was
competing in college, there was only 1 real weapon: Epee.

Foil was a beginner's weapon. Sabre was an exotic mystery. If you didn't
fence epee you were nobody. All of Ireland's international fencers were
epeeists, and I don't think this was a fluke, I think it was an IAFF policy.

Since the ROI rejoined the Quadrangular to make it the 5 Nations, we have
seen a massive resurgence in the popularity of foil and sabre. Perhaps
because foilists and sabreurs now see a 'career path' in their chosen
weapon as opposed to the dead-end job they had before.

But has this been to the detriment of epee in the country? It seems to me
that the standard is way down. It is a pity that we see so little of
Conor Nagle in competition these days. He is perhaps the last holdover
from a Silver Age of Irish epee; The last survivor of a dying race. When he
does compete in epee, despite engaging in minimal training, Conor still
shines out as being vastly superior to the current opposition. Perhaps by
looking at this gulf in talent, considering that Conor is not in training, and
finally realising that Conor was just one of a host of epee contemporaries
of similar skill; one might begin to fathom how far the standard of epee has
dropped in Ireland.