Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman very much. I apologise for being late. The witnesses are very welcome. I also wish Dr. May well in her new role.

Apologies if this has already been mentioned but the witnesses spoke about codes of conduct within the national governing bodies across all sports. If any NGB or sporting body does not take on board these codes of conduct, do the witnesses think their funding from Government should be affected?

I have another question on the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill 2022, which was mentioned. I tabled an amendment that would allow the Media Commission to discuss the issues, with wording to the effect that all sporting organisations under the Federation of Irish Sport would insert this Bill into their codes of conduct across all sports. This would give more governance to people in that each of the organisations would themselves discipline people if they breached it apart from it being done legally. That wording was not accepted, however, and we are going back to look again at maybe using wording like Sport Ireland that will encompass all sports across the country.

Dr. May mentioned disputes in her introduction, and we have Sport Dispute Solutions Ireland. I will speak specifically to a recent case with which we are all fairly familiar and which needs to be looked at. We recently had a case where a number of people were suspended by an organisation and were advised to go to Sport Dispute Solutions Ireland. They won their case yet the costs have gone against them. These are individuals who give hundreds of hours and, indeed, hundreds of years' voluntary contribution to the sport, and this is what they have been left with for defending their names after having been suspended. They now have to foot the legal costs for defending themselves and they were found to have been incorrectly suspended. I do not think that is acceptable.