Mr. Peter Hogan:

I thank Mr. McDermott and I thank the Deputy for his question. We appreciate that there can be hiccups along the way. I have a couple of comments to make. The first is to express our thanks and appreciation to all members of the expert group, particularly those sporting representatives who have joined us and done extraordinary work for us. It has been a collaborative effort over the last few months. As Mr. Kelly mentioned earlier, we have had 17 meetings. One is taking people who are moving well outside their sphere of expertise in the context of the sports that they work with daily, and making that expertise available to minority sports and smaller national governing bodies to assist them to find ways to return to their training and competitive action in a safe way. It ensures that participants, officials who will be present, spectators on site and the wider community will feel confident that the sport is responsible and that events in their communities are being done in a safe, managed way in line with public health guidance.

It is important to remember that everything we do has to be in line with the public health guidance. We have a good relationship with colleagues in the Department of Health. We have had contacts with the acting CMO. We also had contacts with Dr. Holohan before he stood down from his position. There has always been a general agreement across the Government that sport and physical activity is hugely beneficial. It will play an important role in safeguarding health and well-being as we move through the next six to nine months while we are dealing with the pandemic. It continues to play a positive role but we just need to make sure what is happening is safe, managed, overseen and properly supervised. I have every confidence we will continue to do so.