Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 11 May 2022

Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media

Elimination of Abuse Directed Toward Referees, Officials, and Players in Sport: Discussion

Dr. Una May:

First and foremost, I will be very clear on our policy and philosophy. Although I am a new CEO in the role, I would maintain the philosophy we have always had, which is that we do not use the stick of funding for every area we would like to tackle when we feel there is an injustice or difficulty within a sport. We have always taken the approach, which I will continue to do, that we are a development agency. We are there to support, guide and nurture the organisations to develop good practice rather than punish when poor practice emerges.

We provide many templates around codes of conduct, specifically with regard to safeguarding young people, and those codes of conduct overlap into all areas, really. We provide templates for codes of conduct for parents, children and coaches. It is for all the people involved in the running and organisation of sport as well as the participants.

In providing those solutions and reviewing the safeguarding processes we manage, safeguarding is one of the very small number of areas in which we have a very strong link with our funding. Safeguarding is absolutely critical to ensure that our sports are safe for our young children. It is an area that is linked with funding. We are currently in the process of carrying out a club audit around the implementation of safeguarding regulations. The challenge is, of course, that we are talking about many thousands of clubs, and it is at a club level that we need to ensure these are implemented. While we can have codes of conduct at the highest level and all the supports we provide around our governance tools, it is at the club level that this is critical. That is where I would see the code of conduct issue.

I will give Ms O'Connor a chance to respond on the other question.

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