 Keane wrote to the Baron de Coubertin, who was sympathetic, but the Belgian organising committee deferred to the British Olympic Association (BOA), which took the unionist view that Irish competitors should be part of the British team.By August, Keane was proposing that a separate Irish delegation should march under the Union Jack, on the model of Finland at the 1912 Summer Olympics when part of the Russian Empire.The International Olympic Committee (IOC) decided to "suspend all decision until the moment when the Irish question would be solved politically".