A large group of past and present Irish rugby players have written to the Irish Government expressing a loss of "all trust and confidence in the IRFU".

The letter requests government support in enacting "meaningful change" in the women's game in Ireland.

Both the IRFU and the Department of Sport have been approached for comment.

The letter is the latest development in an increasingly fraught relationship between Irish rugby's governing body and its elite female players - some of whom publicly rebuked comments made by IRFU women's rugby director Anthony Eddy in November regarding the level of support offered to the women's game.

Hooker Cliodhna Moloney, who received backing from her team-mates after likening Eddy's comments to "slurry spreading", is among the current players to have signed the letter along with Sene Naoupu, Linda Djougang, Eimear Considine, Sam Monaghan, Kathryn Dane, Laura Sheehan, Lauren Delany, Ailsa Hughes, Anna Caplice, Nichola Fryday, Leah Lyons and more.

Legendary former players Claire Molloy, Lynne Cantwell, Grace Davitt and Jenny Murphy are also among those to have signed.

In October the IRFU launched two reviews into recent failings in the women's game; one directly relating to the team's failure to qualify for next year's World Cup and the other a "separate, broader structural review" focusing on a 'Women in Rugby Action Plan' released in 2018, the main aims of which have not been met.

Additional to the issues facing the national team, problems in the women's game in Ireland were put into the spotlight in September when Ulster and Connacht players were made to get changed beside waste bins before their interprovincial derby.

In their letter to the sports ministers, the past and present players have asked the government to oversee the ongoing reviews to "help guarantee the findings are transparent and help ensure that they maintain their independence".

"Despite there being well-qualified independent leads running these, we have no faith that in the end that these will do anything significantly different to all those which have gone before and therefore the overarching objective of this letter is to ask for your help to intervene in these processes to make them genuinely transparent and meaningful," it reads.

"The aim of this letter is to seek your support now to enable meaningful change for all levels of the women's game in Ireland from grassroots to green shirts.

"We write in the wake of a series of recent disappointments for the international team, on and off the field, but ultimately recent events simply reflect multiple cycles of substandard commitment from the union, inequitable and untrustworthy leadership, a lack of transparency in the governance and operation of the women's game both domestically and at international level, and an overall total lack of ambition about what it could achieve.

"We have always believed that with the right structures, processes and support that Ireland could become a leading women's rugby nation, providing opportunities for everyone at all levels, and even with all of the recent challenges, we are certain that with your support we can come out of this better and stronger."

Players who work for the IRFU or are contracted to them via the sevens programme were not asked to sign the letter to avoid a conflict of interest.