Ms Sarah O'Connor:

In response to Deputy Walsh's point, because sport is all around us in this country, we can look upon it as something that can be taken for granted. Sport is a huge contributor to the economy. It is an industry and supports 40,000 jobs in Ireland. If we include horse racing, it supports 20,000 jobs and those two figures add up to 60,000 jobs. Sport accounts for €2.4 billion to the Irish economy. To take last summer alone, which was a significant summer for sport, the European Championships, the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games in London led to a boost in spending by Irish consumers on sports-related goods and services to the value of €86 million. As well as sporting activity, which is at the hub of all we do, when examining sport we also need to look at the bigger picture.