Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 11 October 2023
Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport And Media
Inclusion in Sport: Discussion
Mr. Ger McDermott:
It will, for sure. We publicly stated just yesterday that it will go towards facility investment and other initiatives. Importantly, under our facility investment strategies, for clubs to access funds that either we have directly or the Government provides, we want them to provide football for girls and be very diverse in their make-up. From the perspective of other initiatives, we will have bespoke programmes, and we run many of those already, to ensure, when it comes to those who are marginalised in society, we will address diversity by ensuring any club that takes funding to run any of these programmes is diverse and accessible to the point where someone who takes part in one of those programmes is immediately welcomed as a member.
On the issue of capacity, as we have clearly stated in the investment strategy document, with the Women's World Cup we have just participated in, we wanted to highlight, as the Deputy has just pointed out, the fact there could be and will be a huge demand to play. To meet that demand, our facility infrastructure has to improve as rapidly as possible.
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