Ms Deirdre Mortell:

I have two answers to that. In the first one, and I am sort of repeating what Mr. McGroarty just said, is it ethical that people do not have access at the moment? I would turn the question round. That would be my first answer. On the second, looking at inclusion in sports and at social outcomes, it has been very difficult to target funding there in a way that is effective and impactful in Ireland.

There are a couple of reasons. One of them is that sport is not a charitable objective and therefore the deployment of philanthropy, in particular, into sport at local level has been limited. I do not want to say there are no cases where this has happened. Of course, we all know where there are cases. However, if we look at other countries, the scale of deployment of philanthropy into sport at club level is nowhere compared to a number of other countries. The way we see it, this is another tool in the toolbox of how to get finance into inclusive sports at local level. Whether they are marginalised communities, people who do not typically participate in sports or whatever other type of marginalised group it is, we need more tools in our toolbox and this is one of them.

There is no guarantee that this would happen, but what has happened a number of times in other countries is that for pilots in particular, it is social investors rather than commercials who come to the table. An example would be from the UK, where it has often been existing foundations that have endowments and are investing their endowments anyway for a return in order to make grants out of those endowments. They are looking for that 5% or 10% or whatever it is that year, so why would they not divert that from some kind of an asset fund into a social investment? They are still getting the investment, but they are putting their mission on the line. There are times when that kind of diversion is quite effective.