Mr. Miche?l ? Conaire:

I might just come in on the events question. As Dr. May mentioned, the Department is developing a major events policy, which will be ready in the coming months. Everybody sees the major events such as Euro 2028. This will encompass those but also smaller events and NGBs in particular would be having a look at that. This year, for instance, there were a number of successful events. There were the European under-23s swimming championships at the National Aquatic Centre. There was a EuroHockey event. We have a cyclo-cross world cup event coming up in November and the European cross-country athletics championships were held in Dublin at the end of 2021. There are a number of events like that, which are supported through the Department or through Sport Ireland.

What we want to see is a more developed policy to make things very clear. A lot of these are kind of ad hoc. Where particular NGBs want to host a championship, they will come and make a proposal. We want to set out a clear strategy as to how they will inform a particular process, whether they apply to Sport Ireland or to the Department and how that will be assessed etc. All of the major events that are supported are subject to a stringent cost-benefit analysis, economic impact and those sorts of assessments. With the development of a policy, it will be much clearer so the games the Senator mentioned would be quite welcome to put in an application. That can certainly be looked at. It might well be something that falls, as the Senator alluded to, on the tourism side because Fáilte Ireland does provide support for a certain number of initiatives as well, depending on tourist numbers or visitors that they bring to the country. There are a number of different mechanisms between sport and tourism to support events such as those.