Mr. Jim Leacy:

Our association is the governing body for billiards and snooker in the Republic of Ireland and affiliated to the European and world bodies. We have clubs all over the country. I acknowledge and thank Sport Ireland for the support it has given to us up to now. For the past few years we have received €63,000 in funding from it, half of which goes towards employing one member of staff, while the rest is used to run the association and assist with the cost of international travel. As a committee member mentioned, sending people away to compete in international competitions is expensive and we can only give a very small amount from the grant aid we receive.

Snooker is watched by millions of people throughout the world. The world championships will begin in a couple of weeks in Sheffield when there will be huge interest in the sport. One of the disappointments is that we do not receive enough recognition when we win world or European championships. We have won European and world championships for many years, but the players do not receive any recognition, apart from us. That is a difficulty. Snooker is not an Olympic sport, but it is included in the world games. It does not seem to receive the recognition it needs.

The problems we face include trying to retain volunteers. It is very difficult to get and keep people involved in the sport. We struggle all the time to get volunteers. We have tried to increase participation by involving schools, but one of the difficulties is we cannot move a snooker table around the country. We have been trying to move fold-up tables to schools and have afternoon programmes whereby we can have three or four fold-up tables in schools to let the children become involved. Perhaps they might then get involved in the sport later.

The difficulties we face include the fact that most of the clubs we use are commercial enterprises. It is a business for the club owners and how we get them involved with the sports capital programme is a problem. As an association, we do not own any club or property; therefore, getting funding through the sports capital programme is a problem for us. A lot of people throughout the country play snooker, but they are not all involved with the association; therefore, we try to get the clubs to involve them to help us.