Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I would be very confident that it will. Nobody disagrees with this and heads nod whenever I mention it. I am not a gambling man but I think it is a virtual certainty that this will happen. However, it is not the intention to take away 50% of grants forever; it is merely while this is not in place. For example, if the board of some sports organisation changed next year and it did not have 40% of men and women on the board, it could come into play again. It is about better governance and reflecting that many of our top sports people are women as has been always the case. This summer was a really good example of that. It is just designed to give representation there. It is something I support and I think it is obvious.

SIPTU wrote to me and we are working to resolve the issues it has with Sport Ireland. I hope we will be able to do that very soon. I will consider that after that.

On the issue of sports capital, the Deputy is right to say that multi-sport is definitely preferred and that will be a feature of the LSSIF when we launch it. In terms of professionals on the committee, we have put a huge amount of effort into outreach to the NGBs this year to encourage them to get clubs to apply. I have personally worked with clubs on the ground. A few clubs were not going to apply because they thought it was too difficult or whatever and I got them to apply. Two bodies in particular, the FAI and the Irish Amateur Boxing Association, along with many others put considerable effort in. The Tánaiste, who has a family history in boxing, asked me to reach out to the IABA to make sure that it knew it had a friend in the Department if it needed help. It put the development officers out there. It had video calls and meetings in an effort to get boxing clubs to apply and we are very keen that they would apply. The GAA and IRFU have done this for a long time.

This year, the FAI put in a remarkable effort to encourage soccer clubs and help them to apply. Whenever I have visited clubs, there was often an FAI representative there. The Chair was at Slane Wanderers when it was launching its plan and there was somebody from the FAI there. I was delighted to see them because it showed me they had picked up on what we were talking about over in the Department, in video calls and through Sport Ireland about helping clubs applying for sports capital. The FAI was definitely doing that. I commend it on that and on putting people on the ground to do it.

We have tried to make the form as simple as possible and it is relatively simple. Of course, we need to have procedures in place because we are awarding significant amounts of money. We are very keen to reach out to as many sports as possible and be as fair as possible to all of them. We have really put in an effort and I think that will be reflected when we publish the list of applications and then when we eventually publish the allocations.