John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Cathaoirleach for accepting this Commencement matter and the Minister of State for coming to discuss this important issue. I will provide some context as to why I am raising this matter. I have met Katie Byrne from Dundalk, who has been working for the Irish Wheelchair Association since the age of 18. At the age of 18, she took an interest in wheelchair basketball and providing this as an outlet and sport for children and adults with disabilities to enable them to play and engage in sport. She has been doing this for about 12 years and does it primarily through Northeast Thunder Wheelchair Basketball Club, a junior and senior basketball team based in Dundalk that plays out of Dundalk Sports Centre. The club does not just cater for people in County Louth. It caters to people in the Minister of State's part of the world in County Meath, people from across the Border and people from Cavan, Monaghan and parts of north Dublin. There are about 11 junior and about ten senior wheelchair basketball teams. One thing Katie Byrne told me that really struck me was the cost of playing wheelchairs. A playing wheelchair for a child costs somewhere in the region of €1,000 to about €2,500 while the cost for an adult is somewhere in the region of €2,000 to about €6,000. All of this is dependent on the size and particular disability of the individual. This is a significant and prohibitive cost.

Perhaps quite rightly, the sports capital grant goes to the national wheelchair association, which then distributes that among its clubs. That is a good process. Other grants they can apply for have traditionally been things like national lottery grants, but again this goes on a regional basis. If you get it one year, you cannot get it for another three years. HSE funding grants are another form of funding. There are local sports partnership grants through the local authority, but they are in the region of about €1,000 to €1,500 and they are always split through a variety of multidiscipline sports.

I hope the Department could have a look at providing some sort of dedicated funding stream for wheelchair basketball, which is a really good sport. I am not coming in here asking for that dedicated funding stream to be fully funded. Let us say we turn around and say we will make sure every club in this country has €3,000 or €4,000 from the Government. That allows these clubs to know the fundraising target they need to reach to be able to buy the proper wheelchairs to ensure people taking part in this sport can enjoy to the best of their ability. That is the benefit of having a dedicated funding stream for these clubs so they can at least know for perhaps a three to five-year term what amount of money they will receive each year and will not be dependent on whether an application is approved or whether an application scheme is oversubscribed.

It is very difficult for people involved in sport, particularly wheelchair basketball, to ask at the start of the year how they will fundraise a specific amount of money to be able to buy wheelchairs. The issue then is they are playing with shoddy equipment. They are playing with wheelchairs they do not fit into, wheelchairs that are broken or wheelchairs that just are not designed for playing this sport, which is a very fast-paced one. When I visited Dundalk Sports Centre last Friday, there were children ranging from the age of four to 12, 13 and 14. Their siblings came along and played with them and engaged in the sport with them, and it was a great thing to see. The work Katie Byrne puts into this club is astounding. There are Katie Byrnes on every edge of this island and in every community helping wheelchair basketball. It would be a great thing if we could examine or start the process of looking at how we ensure that some kind of dedicated funding goes to clubs like Northeast Thunder Wheelchair Basketball Club in order that they know they have a specific amount of funding coming each year and are not relying on grant applications in each continual financial year.

Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)
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I thank Senator McGahon and commend Katie Byrne. Senator Lombard and I will attest to the power of the Senator's Commencement matter. The Rebel Wheelers is one such team in Cork. We have a very good friend in Conor Coughlan and his father Con. Everything the Senator said is very true and I commend him on raising the matter and for supporting wheelchair basketball clubs, especially in Cork and County Louth.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Senator McGahon for raising this issue. I recognise the importance of sport and physical activity for everybody. We need to ensure everybody has the opportunity to participate in sport.

Encouraging greater participation in sport is an important element of the national sports policy and a key aim for the Government. People with a disability have an absolute right to enjoy and reap the rewards of a physically active lifestyle and they should have equal opportunities to be active or to be involved in sport in other ways, including through volunteering.This year, Sport Ireland is investing €11.4 million in core funding for the network of 29 local sports partnerships around the country to undertake a wide range of actions with the aim of increasing sport and physical activity participation levels in their local communities. I suggest that the organisation referred to by the Senator should contact its NGB, the Irish Wheelchair Association or the Louth local sports partnership with a view to making a funding submission to Sport Ireland.

LSP funding focuses particularly on social groups that are harder to reach such as people with a disability, people from areas of socioeconomic disadvantage, ethnic minorities, older adults and women. Through their expertise and local connections with the sports communities, LSPs are able to identify specific needs and deliver effective initiatives accordingly. Sport Ireland is continuing its support of the 29 sport inclusion disability officers across the country this year with investment of over €1 million to help with the work being done to encourage and facilitate more people with disabilities to participate in sport. In addition, over €2.1 million will be invested by Sport Ireland this year in supporting disability sport-focused NGBs to continue their great work in this area. Some €140,000 will be provided to Active Disability Ireland for disability awareness and inclusion programmes.

Dormant accounts funding has been especially significant and is producing good results. Last year, the Department of sport and Sport Ireland provided over €2 million to fund a variety of disability sports projects in local clubs across the country. This funding, and the funding of many other programmes and activities by means of Dormant Accounts Fund, is helping to provide additional sport and physical activity opportunities for those with a disability in every part of the country. This is being done with the great co-operation and ongoing support of the Department for Rural and Community Development, which has demonstrated a strong understanding of the importance of sport for those with a disability or experiencing disadvantage. This year, the Department of sport has received an overall allocation of €10.5 million for dormant accounts sport measures. I assure the Senator that disability sport will again feature prominently in the individual allocations.

The sports capital programme is also available for the purchase of non-personal sports equipment throughout the country. Grants are available to the various organisations that qualify. Over 13,000 projects, including some wheelchair basketball clubs, have now benefited from sports capital funding since 1998, bringing the total allocations in that time to over €1.15 billion. While the current programme closed last September and we hope to announce equipment-only grants soon, I encourage wheelchair basketball clubs to apply for funding under the next round of the sports capital programme.

John McGahon (Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State. Individual clubs do not apply for sports capital funding any more. That was changed. The national organisations now apply for funding, which they then put out to the clubs. I noticed something in the Minister of State's reply that I would really like to comment on because it is a good thing. I refer to the dormant accounts funding. That is a really good chunk of money that is used in a variety of Departments. Dormant accounts are a good source of income. Perhaps the Government could take a look at that and decide to allocate a little more towards a sport that really promotes inclusion, like wheelchair basketball, over the next three to four years. The reason I tabled this matter was to show that it is very difficult for clubs like these that rely on year-to-year funding based on applications that may or may not be successful. Applications to the local authority come from a great many clubs so the funding available is pretty small. Given the large amount of money required to play this sport, it needs a dedicated funding stream. I appreciate the Minister of State taking the debate.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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We will certainly consider that. One of the challenges with dormant accounts funding is that the money in those accounts is running low. There are fewer and fewer such accounts, so the money allocated from them is decreasing. We try to top that up from the general pot of money every year and to ensure that people with disabilities are not disadvantaged, which is something I am very keen on. That is a problem that will start arising with dormant accounts funding over the coming years. It is as well that people realise that. We are certainly very conscious of it. We are getting less money from dormant accounts and want to see how we can make up that shortfall to the greatest extent possible. We are working on that as we speak.

Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)
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That is a very good point. I thank the Minister of State.