Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I think Senator Cassels must be playing over-age when playing over-40s.

First of all my apologies and my compliments to Ms O'Connor for coming here today. It was a very short period after having had the discussion on the issue for her to come back with concrete proposals. I concur with the comments of Senators Byrne and Cassells about the sports capital grants and the signage. I have been successful with sports capital applications but we have not had the documentation down to accept the funding, so I believe there is time to insert such a provision into this year's programme.

I welcome the Department's comments on the amendment I made on foot of what Larry McCarthy said at the GAA congress. I know that the GAA has started work on this itself.

We are going to give a far stronger level of protection to our children if we can implement this across the codes of conduct and the rulebooks of every sporting organisation in the country, where that process will be implemented at club, county and provincial level. It is very important and will give very significant protection to children, in particular, with regard to online safety in all sports. I picked the Federation of Irish Sport to work on the wording because it has over 110 governing bodies and has probably 1.5 million members of those organisations - I may be completely wrong on that figure - but it is very important that we can get that wording and have it inserted into the Bill. I thank the Chairman.