Mr. Kieran Mulvey:

I thank the Chairperson and members of the committee for the invitation. Mr. Treacy and I will outline the current state of play in regard to Sport Ireland and our plans over the next two years. I will deal with issues relating to my priorities and some of the key issues which have been identified over the past number of years. Mr. Treacy will deal with the issues regarding funding and Covid-19 and the measures Sport Ireland has taken.

Sport Ireland was established on 1 October 2015 under the Sport Ireland Act 2015 bringing together the Irish Sports Council, the National Sports Campus Development Authority, the Irish Institute of Sport, and Coaching Ireland, which is based in Limerick, into a new streamlined body to drive the future of Irish sport. During the past five years, there have been a number of significant developments for Sport Ireland, particularly around the development of the campus, and funding of sport within Ireland. I outlined them in the statement I have given to the committee and given the short space of time, I do not intend to go through them in detail.

The National Sport Ireland Campus, based in Abbotsown, is one of the hidden gems of sport in Ireland. It has brought together high-level performance facilities for our national sporting bodies and for our national and international athletes. This week alone, the Irish international soccer and rugby teams are training on new pitches provided by Sport Ireland and in indoor facilities.

These have been magnificent developments funded by the Government in phase 1 and phase 2 of the National Sports Campus. We have added to that an international hockey pitch to Tokyo standards in recognition of the success of our men and women's international hockey teams. We also have new equestrian facilities on the sports campus, which, again, is reflective of the fact that for the first time we have three equestrian teams qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, if they occur next summer. In addition, the GAA has built additional facilities, including pitches, on the campus. Cricket Ireland has new training facilities there as well. The Institute of Sport, the National Aquatic Centre have offices there and negotiations are ongoing with other sporting bodies to bring their national offices onto the campus. I will elaborate on that point later.

It is an exciting time for NGBs in terms of the physical capacity that is being provided apart from the sports capital programme throughout the country. The former Minister of State, Deputy Griffin, will be familiar with the sports capital programme and the provision of facilities. We are also upgrading our coaching capacity in Ireland, with many of our coaches now being recognised nationally and internationally, and around the recruitment of high-performance directors for the individual NGBs in which we assist.

In 2019, Irish high-performance athletes won 80 medals on the international stage in a variety of competitions. We have 52 athletes qualified for the Tokyo Olympics, plus five in reserve. With luck this year, and with further international competition opening up next year and, hopefully, the vaccines announced will be a major player in this regard, we could have up to 90 accredited athletes for the Tokyo Olympics, which is one of the highest ever number for Ireland in terms of international competition and the Olympic Games. A similar picture is developing but with less success on the Paralympic side because of the change and the nature of the arrangements for Paralympic Games.

I am pleased that the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Deputy Martin, has appointed me for a further two-year term to continue the work of Sport Ireland in the context of the development of our facilities on the campus and in the funding of sports. As we know, sport is crucial and central to the social, cultural and community life of Ireland. Like all facets of society, sport in Ireland has been significantly impacted by the onset of Covid-19 and the resulting restrictions. Live televised coverage of our international and national games is a boom to us at the moment in that we are still going through the Gaelic games senior hurling and senior football cycle. Our soccer team is still playing at international level and will play tonight. Our rugby team is continuing its international programme, with a game on Saturday. This is important. We are continuing our anti-doping programme under the terms of the Act. We have an honourable record in this regard and already 850 tests have been completed this year despite the restrictions that have been on us.

The Government has responded very generously to our representations on behalf of the sporting community in regard to the significant emergency that occurred in funding in 2020 and the fact that our national governing bodies, including our major national field sports, were suffering considerable haemorrhage of income arising from the non-attendance and non-performance of events. Other organisations were losing membership fees due to the non-availability of facilities, particularly organisations such as Basketball Ireland and Swim Ireland. Mr. Treacy will address these matters in detail later. It is important to acknowledge what the Government and the Oireachtas have done by voting and agreeing these measures. It has significantly allowed us to maintain all our national governing bodies and to avoid them running into major deficit in regard to their activities. It has given them security and they have welcomed that funding, which was announced recently and we are currently distributing to them. We have received very positive feedback on that. The Government and the Oireachtas have continued that funding in terms of the budget increase of almost of 50% for sport in 2021, a significant proportion of which we will be holding for contingency in regard to issues that will develop in respect of Covid as we go into next year. This funding has given stability to the sector and allayed the concerns of sporting organisations. It has enabled them to retain their head office staff and to maintain the organisation of the sport so that when the restrictions are lifted, they will be ready on a quick return to sport, which we are working on with all the NGBs and the line Department. We are continuing our work with our Olympians, Paralympians, special Olympians and the Olympics. We have a service level partnership agreement with the Olympics in terms of the Olympic events and in the case of Special Olympics. We have continued to fund our accredited athletes into next year. We have a further €2.9 million devoted to expenditure for them and this has given them a source of comfort in terms of their performance and continuing their preparations for the Olympics to allow them to compete in further international competitions next year. We have ring-fenced a further €4 million for the Olympics to meet any contingencies arising from the rearrangement of accommodation programmes, travel, etc. In that sense, much forward planning is happening to ensure that the return to sport in terms of playing and representation will come as no surprise and we will be prepared.

Strong governance across the sectoris an important issue. I am giving priority to this in light of events. We have put in place new protocols, new requirements for funding and new efforts to be made in terms of implementing new governance standards with all of the bodies that are funded by us and new terms and conditions for approval by the board of Sport Ireland for funding arrangements. We are also following the governance code for community, voluntary and charitable organisations as a governance code for sport. From 2021, it will become a condition of funding that all funding bodies must have adopted the governance code for sport, or, if there is a difficulty, to explain those difficulties in order to reach compliance.

On 26 November, we will hold a major conference via technology, which will be attended by more than 280 participants who are chairpersons, members of boards and chief executives of our national governing bodies. This will be co-partnered by the Institute of Public Administration, IPA, and the chief executive of the UK Sport organisation will speak and inform us about arrangements in the United Kingdom. I will be giving particular attention to the issue of governance and conformity to the code of governance that has been agreed and circulated to all funding bodies.

Participation in sport is an important criteria. It is one of the specific measures under the Sport Ireland Act. Over the course of the next two years, Sport Ireland will put particular emphasis on participation in sport at local, national and international level. Sport Ireland is a beneficiary of the Dormant Accounts Fund. We will be putting in place further opportunities, particularly around hard to reach groups, the disabilities sector and those who do not have a great tradition of participation in sport. We have been very successful through the local sports partnerships in funding these initiatives. The funding provided to us under the Dormant Accounts Fund has been utilised effectively by us through the local sports partnerships in conjunction with disability groups and national governing bodies. We are getting a very solid return in terms of the investment in that programme by way of greater participation of these groups in organised sport. We have been allocated a further €10 million in Dormant Accounts Funding for 2021 for this endeavour and sporting activity. We will be funding these arrangements again in 2021. This gives us great security around the programmes we have agreed and the staff we would have been funding in terms of these arrangements with national governing bodies.

The other area which is of vital importance is women in sport and the increase in participation of women in sport at all levels, both in terms of active participation and in governance.

Last year, we appointed our first women in sport officer, Nora Stapleton, who, with her team, is working very successfully through the women in sport committee with NGBs and making an impact in this area. We also recognise that there are significant inroads to be made in this area and are providing a blueprint for future work on this. We are working on major continuity with regard to the women in sport programme. The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media has emphasised to me that she wants significant progress in this area and will be joining us to talk to the committee later this month regarding what she sees as developing the national sports policy in this area. It is not just about participation, where there is a significant fall-off in women in sport aged 16 and over. It is also about ensuring that at all levels, our NGBs, schools and universities take particular note in this area and work in partnership with them.

Since 2005, €22 million has been provided to Sport Ireland and NGBs for the women in sport programme and we hope to increase this exponentially over the next number of years and also through the local sports partnerships-specific programmes. The aim of the programme is to have equal participation between males and females in sport. The gender gradient in sports participation has closed from 15.7% to 3.4% since 2007 according to our most recent monitor in 2019. We will follow it up with this year's return later this year. That is in its final stage of preparation.

Interestingly enough, the coverage of women in sport has only increased by 1.1% in our national media in the past five years. The media need to cover the greater participation of women in sport and their successes at all levels, local and national. It is not just a question for us. It is also a question for the national media, some of which are better than others. Across the board, in the past four to five years, there has only been a 1.1% increase in coverage in our national media so work needs to be done with it. However, I must compliment the recent efforts by RTÉ to cover Gaelic women's sports - camogie and Gaelic football - and the national sports awards run by The Irish Timesevery year recognising the achievements of women in sport. There are particular areas but we need more media coverage of women in sport and more media reporting of their successes. The board accepted at our meeting yesterday that we will give more attention to women in sport and to narrowing the gap where we can and where we can assist. At board level, we recently conducted a survey on the representation of women. The Minister has told me that she would like to see, as would we, greater participation of women at board level in sports. We will aim to achieve at least 30% and, hopefully, 40% or 50% over the next number of years. This is an uphill journey in respect of governing bodies and the participation of women in sport and at administrative level and the management of the game at national level in the respective sports.

We have been very successful internationally in respect of the high-performance strategy for Irish sport. The important issue is bringing stability and avoiding risk in this area over the next two to three years. Our national high-performance sport strategy for the next 12 years will be published shortly. This will bring us over the Tokyo cycle and into the Paris and Los Angeles cycle of the Olympic Games over the next number of years so it is important to plan for that. We fund 117 international athletes and four teams at international level. That will be an important element of our work, laying the groundwork on top of what we have achieved. This means building the facilities as well as funding these elite athletes to allow them to continue their involvement in sport and ensuring that in doing so, they do not lose out educationally or in terms of employment. We have various programmes to assist them in this regard. We hope to have a successful Olympic Games in Tokyo and have a wide range of participation in a multiplicity of sports. It will not be dominated, as it was in the past, by boxing or other sports. We have a high range of international medalling and qualification in these areas. As I said, our three international equestrian teams are accredited so we are looking forward to that if it goes ahead. Preparation for Paris 2024 is proceeding but is now in a truncated period of three years. We have started the initial programme. We looking forward to publishing the high-level strategy for high-performance sport 2021 to 2032 as soon as the Ministers are available.

The Sport Ireland campus in Abbotstown, north Dublin, is an incredible resource for us and a key priority. We are preparing the new master plan, which is almost at final draft stage. We hope to complete that at the board meeting in December. We will then be in a position to come to Government with our proposals relating to the development of the national sports campus and future arrangements. We are working very closely with Fingal County Council, which is our local authority. It is very supportive of and committed to what we are trying to achieve there. It will provide a blueprint and master plan for the campus and the facilities we intend to develop on the campus over the next ten to 15 years. The important element of this is to bring more NGBs on to the campus and, hopefully, build a hotel on it that will also be an athlete hotel as part of a public-private partnership arrangement, which the previous Minister allowed me to proceed with. This latter development will allow us to attract international competition to the campus and create a village-type atmosphere.

We are already planning for the development of a new velodrome centre, which will also incorporate the national badminton centre. This is the next major building project we are discussing with government and initial funding has been given to us to do that. We hope to have the postponed European cross-country championship on the course on the campus in 2021. They are exciting prospects. We still have Abbotstown House, which is the old landlord house in the Hamilton estate of Abbotstown. That is maintained on a care and maintenance basis by us but we hope we can revisit that in the near future. Hopefully, we will be able to restore it and allow it to be used for national and international events. My own preference - this will take time to develop - is to create a museum of sport in Abbotstown House. Sport Ireland's headquarters moved to the campus from Blanchardstown in 2018. We have settled into the converted courtyard - the old stables in Abbotstown House. That is working very well so we are leading by example in that regard.

They are a number of the priorities. Obviously, there are other day-to-day operations developed by Mr. Treacy and his team in Sport Ireland. New issues come up at the board's regular monthly meeting with which the board must deal. We had a four-hour meeting over Zoom about expenditure under Covid, previous expenditure, the budget for 2021, the new high-performance strategy that we must finalise and other reports we receive. A significant amount of work is happening under the ambit of Sport Ireland in a multiplicity of areas with a multiplicity of governing bodies and local sports partnerships. Irish sport is in a good place in terms of the funding arrangements that have been made. They have been very resilient during the Covid period.

Hopefully, with our return to sport protocols, which we will have developed, we hope we will have vibrant sporting activity during 2021 - the vaccine is crucial in this regard - and the other issues regarding Tokyo will be resolved. The footfall on campus was 1.7 million people last year. This has fallen substantially by 63% due to the Covid restrictions so we hope to increase that footfall in the coming years.