Ms Ger McTavish:

I thank the Deputy for the question. There are currently 29 sports inclusion disability officers in the local sports partnership across the country. They are our network of support at grassroots level for our initiatives and programmes. We are putting all our resources together in a networking forum to ensure we identify and resource the gaps.

We are also creating a network of the 65 national governing bodies for sport. Many have a specific sports inclusion disability officer but if they do not have that support or resource in their national governing body, because some of them are volunteer-led, we bring them together as a collective to support each other.

That network was officially launched this year. All the funded bodies come together as a network to share knowledge, training and education and build networks and relationships so that they deliver good practice on the ground while supporting one another.

The second part as regards resources looks at the autism strategy. We have two actions in the autism innovation strategy. Currently, we are working on autism training and support with Active Disability Ireland. Those workshops have been rolled out across the local sports partnerships and through the national governing bodies of sport. We also look at the autism-friendly towns in Dublin, Cork and Clonakilty. They have spread out, not only through various venues, but also clubs. We are looking at working closely with AsIAm on more of those.

In the past year for phase 1 of the roll-out of the policy and the statement of commitment that Sport Ireland has, €1 million has come from the Government as a resource. We are looking to project what we will need in years 2 and 3. We are thankful for that resource and we hope to be able to build on that Government support. As everyone has mentioned, one-to-one resources are what are mainly needed for persons with disabilities and we need to take that into account.