Mr. Aidan Walsh:

A model we see working very well in Sport Ireland is the women in sport model, which was launched six or seven years ago. It is an internal department in Sport Ireland headed up by a high-profile person and given funding to get more women involved in sport. How it has grown over the past six or seven years is fantastic with regard to participation levels and visibility at board level. It has grown legs beyond where it started six or seven years ago. We see this model as the one Sport Ireland should use for all minority groups. The model that should be copied and pasted at proportionate level for the various minority groups is that Sport Ireland has an internal department that looks after minority groups. The question that should be asked is why this is not being done.

Funding for diversity and inclusion in sport is delegated to the national governing bodies and sports partnerships to get involved without Sport Ireland being centrally involved. Is it possible for Sport Ireland to copy and paste the women in sport minority group model from six or seven years ago and reuse it? We do not have an answer to that question, but what we see as the best use of public funding is to take a programme that has done well and has proven to be successful for a minority group and use it for other minority groups to get more people involved in sport.