Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. I have been very lucky over the years in that I have been involved in a lot of sport and have received no serious injuries, except for four months ago when I fell off my bike and broke my hip - these things do happen. My focus is players' concerns. Players have to be educated and informed about the research and the culture change. As far as I am concerned there are two types of sports - the sports for the elite professionals like the Gaelic players who represent their country and go over to Australia or the rugby players or the boxers. To me that is the elite. They seem to be the ones who are being looked after most of the time. The people who are my concern would be the amateurs, club players like wee boxing clubs in very small towns or horse riding clubs. I think they are the ones that should be looked after really well. The committee received a letter from Mr. Cliff Beirne, who is a consultant surgeon in the sports clinic in Santry. When I started to read through his letter, I realised that the media is getting all these reports and there is nothing really being done about it. He stated that concussion is a traumatic brain injury. We all accept that. Repetitive concussion may result long term in degenerative brain diseases. In this country we have seen a lot of bad incidents over the last years. I will mention a few examples if the Chairman will allow it. In 2009 Lucas Neville, a young St. Michael's student who suffered a second brain bleed----