Mr. Kieran Mulvey:

Swim Ireland is a successful NGB and is located on our campus, so we have constant access to it. Under the first scheme for LSPs, we funded 1,600 clubs and, subsequently, under the NGB, there have been another 1,500. It depends where the allocation came in, but those that may not have applied in the first round will certainly apply in the potential second round, and we will meet that. We will not repeat the process but review new applicants.

Deputies Dillon, Fitzpatrick and others referred to consistency, and it is a big problem. There needs to be consistency but the problems for indoor and outdoor sports are different. As the committee will be aware, there are particular problems with gyms that have swimming activities. My local gym is closed and we would all like to get back to that kind of activity.

The issue relating to women in sport sounds easy but it is difficult. We hope that national trailblazers in women's sport will become champions of sport and encourage women to take up sports. It is still a problematic area. There are a number of reasons that women often drop out of sport at the age of 16. One relates to a problem that sometimes arises in respect of team sport, namely, preparation for the leaving certificate, or whatever examinations, even though that applies to boys as well. Another reason is the movement into individual sports, and there are some great personal achievements. We are putting a great deal of hope and trust in the success of women's Gaelic football, which was the fastest growing sport a year ago, and that is true also in the case of camogie. If a rugby sevens team is developing, that brings its own appeal, as does the women's international hockey team. It is about creating champions of sport. Obviously, the success of Katie Taylor and others such as Kellie Harrington in boxing has helped. The same applies to athletics, where Catherina McKiernan was successful over the years.

As was mentioned earlier, it is about putting the current women in sport programme on the pedestal it needs to be on. It needs to be upgraded. The appointment of Nora Stapleton as manager of the programme will be a great success. We have great advocates on the board, such as Lynne Cantwell and Olive Loughnane, who are champions in their own right. The problem, sometimes, can relate to the fact that all-girls schools promote their sports, whether basketball, hockey, camogie, Gaelic football or rugby, but that may not happen in a mixed school environment, whether in community schools or comprehensive schools, where different arrangements are in place. Perhaps in the latter case, more emphasis is put on boys' sports and championships than on female participation in competitive sports.

Multiple factors are involved. We have compiled a number of papers on this and will certainly forward them to the committee for distribution. We are making a big push in respect of participation and putting the emphasis on NGBs to apply for women in sport programmes under their own funding. Over the past decade, we have set aside approximately €22 million, which will definitely increase incrementally and has to because it is part not just of my priorities but also of those of the board and the executive. On a multiplicity of fronts, it is about trying to promote the various aspects of the issue but also getting into the universities and schools, and telling them, at that level apart from the national governing bodies, that there is a physical education necessity to this. Of course, we will recall the difficulty over the years of battling to get physical education teachers into schools and getting the Department to fund them at a particular quota.