Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will take the funding question. The youth field sports programme is funding we give to the FAI, and similar sums are given to the Irish Rugby Football Union and the GAA. Such organisations have relatively large incomes compared with those of other national governing bodies of sport, but it is not the only funding we give them. In 2018, for example, which was the most recent round, soccer clubs throughout the country benefited from the sports capital programme to the tune of €6.5 million, while in the 2017 round, the figure was just over €7 million.

That funding is hugely beneficial to the sports in question and it is not counted in terms of the core funding that is administered through Sport Ireland. Those sports, just by virtue of their size, get a proportionately larger amount of the overall sports capital budget. Of the €57 million allocation under the most recent round, they received €6.5 million. That is considerable, amounting to roughly €1 out of every €8 that was administered. The capital grants do reflect the size of the sports more than the current allocation, the reason being that there is strong income for those sports on the current side which other national bodies do not have. In 2017, the capital allocation of €7 million to the sports in question again represented approximately one eighth of the funding that was given nationally through the sports capital programme.