Mr. Jonathan Hill:

I thank the Senator, and if he has read our document and our vision, the largest amount of money that we have allocated is to go into grassroots. We are looking at around €425 million across a 15-year period. We know that is hard, and we absolutely accept that we have had a lot of help from Government already with grassroots facilities but we need so much more. There tend to be better facilities in clubs that have a bigger community against those that have a smaller community. As we have outlined, we have a really well thought through, data-driven, evidence-based approach to what we are looking for. It is across 128 new grass pitches, along with more artificial pitches because obviously, they get more use. It is about floodlights for those artificial pitches, and we have talked specifically about clubhouses and changing rooms within clubhouses. One of the things our audit told us was that in our existing facilities, such as we have, there is a real dearth of facilities for women and girls. One thing we would ask, and I this has been taken up by the Minister anyway, is that any new builds from now on will have to integrate facilities for women and girls. That would be a big policy shift to a degree.

The ask is reasonably simple. It is more help and more support. On Deputy Griffin's earlier point, we need to make sure that we are supporting our grassroots in particular to maximise the access to things like the SCP. We would like to the SCP happen more often, in all honesty. We also would like the criteria for clubs to be able to access SCP to be reduced to a degree with regard to those smaller clubs that may, for example, not own their ground or only have a very small or short lease on the facility. That would be something we would ask the Government to look closely at, making it easier for our grassroots clubs to be able to avail of the existing grant funds that we have. We will help them do that and it would be great if Government would help us do that too.