Mr. James Galvin:

I want to go back to Deputy Fitzpatrick's point and comment on high performance sport. It is important to acknowledge that many of the structures or key enablers for Ireland to deliver in high performance are now coming to fruition. These include the Sport Ireland Institute, Coaching Ireland, the National Indoor Arena, the National Aquatic Centre, and the high performance unit within Sport Ireland. We now have a greater number of high performance directors within national governing bodies, and a greater number of international events are being hosted in Ireland. Structures and key enablers are now coming very much on stream.

The Deputy raised New Zealand and while I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan's ambitious statement about us emulating the performances of New Zealand at the Olympic Games and in high performance sport, for illustrative purposes perhaps it is useful to point out some of the figures around investment in high performance sport. Between now and Tokyo, New Zealand will invest approximately €42 million in high performance sport per year. In the period between the London Olympic Games and the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games, we invested in the region of €42 million or €43 million. Mr. McDermott might be able to clarify some of those figures, but it is approximately a quarter of the level of investment. I am prepared to concede that the New Zealand model is at a much more mature and advanced stage in terms of its life cycle for high performance sport, but that is the kind of level of investment that is needed to emulate those sorts of outputs.