Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 15 June 2023

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statements 2021 - Sport Ireland and Sport Ireland Facilities DAC

9:30 am

Dr. Una May:

I thank Deputy Devlin for another opportunity to talk about something that I am very proud of, namely, our campus. I will offer Mr. Murray the opportunity to come in with a bit more detail. The campus is operating at a very high level. We have returned since the pandemic and our numbers are increasing very significantly. We have 1,000 children a week participating in our gymnastics academies and significantly more than that in swimming. Mr. Murray can give the figures. We have 1 million visitors a year to the National Aquatic Centre. As the campus is growing, we have activities across the board. Last weekend we had the national junior archery team training. We have the IRFU high performance centre, which is absolutely full gas for the entirety of the season. We have an awful lot of activity on the campus. We are moving into the area of supporting national governing bodies, NGBs, with their bids for hosting international events, which is really important. I mentioned earlier about the international dimension of the role of a lot of our governing bodies. It is important for them to be able to position themselves as being of a standard and status high enough to be successful in bidding for international events. This year we host the European under-23 swimming championship on the campus. We are also hosting European hockey qualifiers. For the second year in a row, we will be hosting a world cup in cyclocross. We have a target each year. Next year we will be targeting an international gymnastics event. Each year we target three to four major international events on the campus. That is very important for national governing bodies and the sector in which they operate, which is the international sector.