Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge Deputy Fitzpatrick's sporting background and his huge involvement over many years in Louth and beyond. He made a very fair point. The facilities are certainly a challenge to female participation. I saw that from engaging with many clubs and those involved in women's sport. To try to respond to that directly, in the assessment process for the sports capital and equipment programme this year, the allocations of which we hope to announce in mid-January, there is a direct reference to female participation and to a club's involvement in female participation in sport. That will have a big impact on the dispersal of allocations that happens in January. I am very conscious of the need to accelerate the improvement of facilities.

People will find that when we announce these sports capital grants, there will be a significant step change in the investment that the Government and the State makes in sporting infrastructure. That will have a really positive benefit for sporting clubs, the grassroots. Many clubs, in their current applications, are actually trying to do the things the Deputy referenced by expanding their changing rooms and facilities to try to deal with the issues he mentioned. That has to be a big priority for clubs that want to be inclusive and to reflect their own communities. We want to reward those who are doing that, which is why we have referenced it in the assessment process for the sports capital and equipment programme.

The Deputy referenced New Zealand and he is correct in saying it has made great progress on this in recent years. If the Deputy looks at the high performance strategy I launched in the summer, we referenced two countries as models we are trying to emulate, namely, New Zealand and Denmark. Both their sporting systems and the investment they have made from an infrastructural perspective have brought them great progress in general and in overall participation but they have also seen the fruit of that success internationally. There was considerable reference to New Zealand in the briefing I received and there is an acknowledgement that is an important comparator when it comes to our ambitions for sport and female participation.

As I noted earlier to Deputy Dillon, the one club model and greater co-operation are very important, especially in the Gaelic games family. Clubs that have progressed that have seen the benefits of it when it comes to female participation. People throughout GAA, ladies' football and camogie are trying to do that at a local level and I hope we will see more co-operation at a national level. In fairness, there is better sharing of facilities but we need to avoid instances such as those we saw during the summer, which were not good for the overall participation and the availability of facilities.