Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank members for their invitation to appear before the joint committee and giving me this opportunity to engage in a productive discussion on sport related issues. Before I address the issues outlined by the committee, as this is the first occasion on which I have exclusively addressed sport related issues, I take the opportunity to congratulate all of our sportsmen and women who performed with great success at home and abroad in 2016. The accomplishments of our athletes at the Olympic and Paralympic Games last summer must be commended. As well as the two silver medals won by Annalise Murphy and Paul and Gary O'Donovan, Irish Olympians achieved 16 top ten and 14 top 20 finishes. Our Paralympians won 11 medals and achieved 22 top eight finishes. Overall, 2016 was an excellent year for elite Irish athletes, with 54 medals won at world and European level in sports supported by Sport Ireland.

I will now address the issues outlined by the committee. I will be pleased to have a broader discussion on these and other sport related issues. I thank the committee for giving us advance notice of the topics it wanted to discuss.

It is vital that the highest standards of governance be in place at all levels of Irish sport to ensure accountability, fairness and transparency across organisational activities and to support the integrity of sport, both at home and abroad. The committee will be aware that Sport Ireland is the statutory body with responsibility for the governance of national governing bodies of sport. Sport Ireland has an important role to play in governance issues and ensuring taxpayers' money is used to best effect. It has strong procedures in place for dealing with governance issues and ensuring financial oversight of the national governing bodies funded by it. In an effort to strengthen good governance practices, we have engaged with Sport Ireland to introduce a mandatory requirement for all national governing bodies in receipt of Government funding through Sport Ireland to adopt the governance code for community, voluntary and charitable organisations. It will now be mandatory for all national governing bodies funded by Sport Ireland to begin the process of adopting the code during 2017. The timeframe for progress on a comply or explain basis for the larger sports organisations will be 2019, with 2020 being the timeline for smaller organisations.

Ensuring gender equality in the governance of sport in Ireland is an important objective. In that regard, a consultation process has commenced with national governing bodies of sport on how best to ensure women's involvement in leadership roles in sport, including the option to require national governing bodies to meet a gender balance target. A very successful meeting took place on 16 December with representatives from close to 50 sports organisations. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss approaches to advancing the participation of women in positions of leadership in sport. This matter is still at discussion stage and a period of consultation is just concluding. Sport Ireland invited views from the governing bodies of sport, with a deadline of Friday last for the receipt of submissions. We expect to receive a report from Sport Ireland shortly outlining the findings from the consultation process. We will then consider the inputs and observations received before decisions are made on how to proceed.

The total amount available for spending on sport this year is just over €112 million. This includes €6 million in unspent capital which has been carried over from 2016.

On the current side, the budget for Sport Ireland is €49.8 million, an increase of €2.5 million on the 2016 allocation. This funding will allow Sport Ireland to continue to support participation and high performance programmes in 2017. In addition, €5 million has been allocated from the dormant accounts fund to my Department to support measures to promote sport in disadvantaged areas.

Sport Ireland's capital funding allocation is for the development of the National Sports Campus. The allocation of €2.9 million in 2017 is to meet existing commitments. Members will be aware that the Taoiseach officially opened the National Indoor Arena at the National Sports Campus last week. The National Indoor Arena is a very significant and welcome addition to the existing facilities at the campus, providing world-class indoor facilities for athletics, gymnastics and a variety of other sports.

The sports capital programme is the Government's primary vehicle to support the development of sports facilities and the purchase of sports equipment. It aims to foster an integrated and planned approach to developing sports and physical recreational facilities throughout the country. In particular, its stated objectives are to assist voluntary and community organisations, national governing bodies of sport, local authorities and schools to develop high quality, safe, well designed, sustainable facilities in appropriate locations; to provide appropriate equipment to help to maximise participation in sport and physical recreation; to prioritise the needs of disadvantaged areas in the provision of sports facilities; and to encourage the sharing of local, regional and national sports facilities by clubs, community organisations and national governing bodies of sport.

On 21 December we announced that €30 million would be be made available under the 2017 sports capital programme. The application process opened on 23 January and will remain open until 24 February. A previous criticism of the scheme was the number of invalid applications received. In this regard, a significant effort has been made to simplify and streamline the application process. Most members will be familiar with the form, but I will spell it out briefly. The form has been reduced from 14 pages to six. Other supports for applicants include comprehensive written and video guides, both of which are available on my Department's website. For the first time, we have also arranged a series of regional workshops to provide guidance for potential applicants on how to complete the form. The workshops will commence next week and I understand there is a significant level of interest in attending. Based on previous rounds of the programme, the assessment process takes a number of months to complete and I expect the actual grant allocations to be made some time towards the end of the summer. The programme has transformed the sport landscape of Ireland with improvements in the quality and quantity of sports facilities in virtually every village, town and city. We are committed to ensuring this progress will continue. In this regard, we will be engaging with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform as part of the mid–term review of the capital plan to ensure the sports capital programme will be opened for applications on an annual basis in the future.

In terms of the challenges we have to face and the possible strategies we might usefully deploy to successfully overcome them, the committee will be aware that in November my Department launched a major consultation process for the development of a new national sports policy framework. By the mid-January deadline for the submission of comments, almost 50 responses had been received. The up-to-date figure is 55. I am very happy with this response level. We are in the process of examining the submissions and I am confident that the new policy will benefit greatly from the insights of the various sports stakeholders. Even though the deadline has passed, we will not turn away anyone else who might wish to make a submission even at this late stage. I am pleased to have the opportunity to extend that invitation, both publicly and to members.

There are several key challenges which we will have to address and I will briefly run through a few of those. However, there is one challenge that I would consider should be to the forefront in our thinking, and that concerns how to increase the numbers participating in sport and physical activity generally. There are worrying trends that point clearly to declining numbers overall. In the most recent Irish Sports Monitor Report, it was found that 45% of the population participate regularly in sport, which represents a small decline in participation levels in both genders. A continuation of a situation whereby more than half the population is not participating in sport on a regular basis would have significant consequences for Irish society as a whole in the future in terms of adverse impacts on the health of the nation. Although other lifestyle choices such as improving diet are important factors that can contribute to a solution, increasing participation rates in sport and physical activity is certainly part of that solution and we will be giving that challenge a particular priority in the period ahead.

Sports policy overlaps with other Departments and agencies through initiatives such as Healthy Ireland, education, social policy and issues such as regional planning. Cross-sectoral engagement and a more joined up approach by Government, working closely with key stakeholders, will be one of our priorities for the new sports policy.

Everyone, regardless of age or ability, should be able to participate in sport. We will aim, therefore, to ensure that sports policy should support everyone from early childhood play through education and adult life. For this to happen there needs to be sustained investment in sport. We will need, therefore, to define the parameters of such an investment programme over the long term, bearing in mind the importance of current investment in people as well as capital facilities.

There is also the challenge of competing and succeeding on the international stage. There is an undoubted inspirational effect among young people in particular of seeing their sporting heroes being successful at the major international sporting events, and we will have to consider how best to drive forward. While we have come a long way in recent times in terms of the world-class facilities at the National Sports Campus, there will be a need for continued commitment to our high performance sector.

The work of the national governing bodies and local sports partnerships also warrants particular consideration. They each play an absolutely vital role in the Irish sports landscape. Ensuring good governance throughout all organisations involved in sport in order to maintain public confidence in sporting bodies is accordingly a key policy objective.

I have mentioned just a few of our challenges today, and we will be working hard over the next few months to set a clear strategic direction for engagement by Government and Sport Ireland with the sporting sector. I hope to finalise the new sports policy framework around the middle of this year. For now, we are looking forward to hearing the views and priorities of this committee, which will help form part of my overall considerations.