Mr. Liam McGroarty:

I will start off with a couple of answers and then Ms Carty will come in on the question about inclusion, which is very important. I was always glad I was playing on Senator Blaney's team, as opposed to Deputy McHugh's team that kept kicking lumps out of people.

We have the same evidence about the facility. A little boy or girl in Moscow competes with 80,000 other boys and girls for a place on the football pitch. A little boy or girl in Mayo competes with 1,200. We have analysed the football facilities across Europe and we punch above our weight. The investment by the State in facilities has been fantastic. Facilities are not the big challenge. At the heart of it, as Deputy Mythen and the Chair mentioned, is that at the club level we are reliant on volunteers. An SOC allows us to professionalise a workforce that will support volunteers to do more and better.

That is one point on access.

The second point is on the Bright Star Boxing Academy in England. Their biggest learning was that the boxing club was not close enough to the kid who needed it. The way we have designed our facilities today is that they are often outside of the town. A developer will have bought the inner city area and built a block of flats. Now, the elderly and young people who live there cannot access a facility because it is two or three miles away. The under-represented people will not go looking for that physical activity. We have to bring it to them. The biggest investment by the boxing club was in buses. They were able to bus the children from the disadvantaged areas and make sure they got to the boxing club. Access is about more people who are a bit more professional and who can administer, promote and encourage physical activity for lifelong engagement. As the Deputy said, the way sport is designed today is we want to get the best people as quickly as possible and everybody else does the best they can. We need to design it for our elderly people. We are becoming more elderly. We are living healthier lives for longer. We need that physical activity. The second point is about buses.

On the other piece about data and evidence, and the national sports policy speaks about this, we are not capturing enough data and evidence to say what is impactful and makes more people be physically active. We have to be better at how we capture data by using better technology and social media to track who is using our facilities. There are a great number of facilities today that are lying empty for most of the hours in the day when the elderly could be using them. Schools could open their grounds on the weekends, and so on. That point is around data and usage. Monitoring insights on that would be good too. Perhaps Ms Carty might like to speak on the inclusion piece.