Ms Fiona Hanaphy:

A point was made earlier about leveraging off existing facilities. A sub-committee of the board works on the development of grassroots participation. When we do things like going to schools or do Tricks 4 Sticks programmes, I come across an inability to break through some of these invisible walls that prevent us from availing of facilities. I will give an example. Considerable money was put into laying 4G and 5G pitches. If a 3G pitch is put down, it is suddenly available to hockey. An awful lot of money is put into these pitches that might cost €180,000 or whatever when a little extra money might allow more sports to use these pitches.

I make this request of the committee. In all conversations and meetings that take place, some thought should be given to leveraging off AstroTurf and other all-weather facilities to make some of them hockey pitches as well as pitches for other sports. I do not know if that is ever addressed anywhere. We can only do so much. There are hockey pitches, 4G pitches and 5G pitches. It is about opening up and accessing existing facilities.