Mr. John Treacy:

I am happy to answer those questions. The number of golf club members has been falling. From our sports monitor yesterday, it was probably one of the sports that was in the limelight due to reducing memberships which people can no longer afford. It is the first thing to go. The golfing unions have a challenge to ensure they become relevant to their clubs and support the clubs to attract members. They are looking at that through the golf federation.

There are a number of pieces to our support for the golfing unions. We give approximately €200,000 to the governing body of the sport for core activities. We provide approximately €375,000 on the high performance side, which is for our amateur players. It is around putting high performance coaches in place and making sure training camps are available. They have availed of Carton House, where there are fantastic facilities. They have a great relationship there. They have a high performance environment there. It is also about putting coaches with those golfers and ensuring they are exposed to international competition at the appropriate age.

This is another organisation that has been hugely successful. The Rory McIlroys and Graeme McDowells of this world, who were out last week in the Ryder Cup, are a product of the GUI and its coaching systems, the coaches on the ground and the club coaches. Our amateur golfers recently won a silver medal at the European championship. They are very successful at what they do. They have criteria in place around funding the amateur players on the Irish teams which we have approved. The maximum grant they can give the amateurs, however, is €5,000. When players decide they are going to go professional, we have the golf trusts we established.

We gave approximately €120,000 to that. Fáilte Ireland put in about another €30,000, and we also got a small amount of funding in the past from the commercial sector. In essence, we had about €180,000 or €200,000 to spend on young aspiring golfers, and those young aspiring golfers have to meet criteria before they are funded. It is not a case of someone turning 18 years of age and saying that they are going to be a professional. They need to meet criteria.