Ms Mary O'Connor:

I will address the volunteerism aspect first. The Federation of Irish Sport, in association with University College Cork and with funding from Sport Ireland, is examining succession planning in volunteering. We have a concern about succession planning, including in the examples the Deputy cited. We hope that this research will help us to implement actions.

Volunteerism has been in Irish sport for centuries and we need to maintain it, but there are additional stresses on volunteers now. One issue is the abuse of volunteers – not just referees, other officials or players, but volunteers in volunteer roles at club level. We need to examine this issue, and I hope that the research will address it.