Ms Helen O'Rourke:

Since our foundation in 1974, we have seen unprecedented growth. We are a 32-county, volunteer-led organisation with a global presence in all five continents. We have just surpassed a record 200,000 membership. This rate of growth is exponential. To give an example, our membership in 2007 was just over 132,000, a 32% growth in that short timeframe. The interest and attendance at our showpiece event, the All-Ireland final, has grown year on year. In 2013, the attendance was 25,103, while, in 2019, this attendance had more than doubled setting a record attendance at 56,114. This was the seventh year in a row of an increased attendance. It is testament to our players, mentors and members for all their hard work and effort.

We are extremely grateful to all those who have come before us since 1974 and laid the foundations and groundwork for those of us who have followed. We have set ourselves ambitious targets in our strategic roadmap. We believe there are many opportunities to continue our growth and development with the right supports and resources. Our aim is to provide the opportunity to all girls and women, no matter what their age, location, skill level or ambitions might be, to play football should they want to do so. We ensure programmes like Gaelic4Mothers&Others, Gaelic4Teens and Gaelic4Girls to provide these initial gateways to participation in our sport having an impact on all communities.

With this growth, however, also comes challenges and the 20x20 campaign brought some of these to the forefront for women’s sport and united sports across the country. We are fortunate to have TG4 as our sponsor for the past 20 years. Our media coverage on television has increased annually. Like all sports, however, we continue to strive for greater presence in print media. We supported the 20x20 campaign wholeheartedly and we set targets to increase attendances and participation levels.

We want to continue as a leading sporting body. To enable us to do this, we urge all committee members to look at greater funding for women’s sport. In 2020, the LGFA generated funds of just over €4.7 million, comprising €4.2 million in self-funding and €485,000 from Sport Ireland funding. In 2007, we were 24% funded by Sport Ireland compared to just 9% in 2020. Despite this, our membership has increased by 32% in the same period. Currently the association, based on existing funding available, operates a small workforce of 14 full-time staff. We operate the inter-county player grant scheme in co-operation with the Camogie Association and the Women’s Gaelic Players Association. The targets are team-based and the benefits go to the teams.

A further area of much debate is access to facilities due to increased playing numbers. There have been improvements in this area with the majority of our county games played in county grounds and further double-header fixtures with GAA games. However, the sports capital grant scheme is realistically out of reach for ourselves. The majority of our units simply would not have the initial funding required to enter these schemes to allow us to develop our own grounds and facilities.

I thank the Chairperson for the invitation to address the committee. I hope from this brief statement it can see the breadth of work completed by our association to promote women’s sport and with minimal funding. We fully support objectives of creating an equal playing field financially for players at inter-county level. I must highlight the importance of funding for projects and initiatives supporting the additional 97% of our membership also. They form the basis from which our inter-county players are selected and will greatly benefit from further investment.