Ms Sinéad McNulty:

I thank the Deputy for his question. It is great to hear about his daughters' involvement through the ages, and I hope they are still getting involved over in Den Haag. Mary Gavin will look after them well over there.

Similar to Helen, we recognise it is an issue. As mentioned in the Irish Sports Monitor study, there is a huge gap in volunteering and participation. The gap is much larger even in volunteering than in participation for women than it is for men. The type of programme we have created to try to bridge that gap is something called the MNA programme, so it is motivate, nurture and aspire, where we educate parents and young people to play together first, then we teach the parents some of the basic coaching skills, and then we train them up as full-on coaches. We assign them a mentor within a club so they can learn, develop and build confidence in the skill of coaching and, it is hoped, stay involved in the club.

That is funded by Sport Ireland. It has been a hugely successful and popular project with more than 150 clubs participating. It is through dedicated and focused initiatives like that that we can make the changes that need to happen. We receive a grant of €20,000 per year to run that programme. To scale it up and have people run and co-ordinate it, it would need a little bit more help and more people on the ground to deliver it. The overall issue is one we want to tackle and are committed to tackling in our new national development plan.