Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I welcome this Bill. The establishment of a national sports campus authority is a good idea. Most of what I had planned to say has been said already, but there are a number of issues I would like to flesh out with the Minister. The authority will oversee, plan and develop a sports campus at Abbotstown. I remember Abbotstown being a leader in a field when the State veterinary laboratory was there many years ago. Many people from the farming community around the country would remember Abbotstown with great affection over the years.

As every other speaker in this debate has stated, sport contributes to the well-being of millions of people, be they participants or spectators, in its varying aspects. Sport has something for everybody. As every year goes, we in Ireland are getting more hungry for sport. This is whether we are involved with it or debating it, and even includes people who were never of the sporting kind. We have wall to wall analysis of matches, and it must drive the small minority of people who have no time for televised sports around the bend for so much sport to be on television. The reason for this is that an appetite rightly exists for the sport.

We will start at the beginning. Young people starting out have myriad subjects they must master in their formative years. These include a formal school education, with many young people doing their best coming up to their exams as we speak. The hard grind of formal education is very important. There is also the aspect of self development, which is so important to every human being. There are personal matters, such as accepting responsibility for their own actions, developing interpersonal relationships and socialising.

A large part of young people's training for life is the participation in sport, or being fit in one way or another. This does not have to be participation in a competitive sport. Many people find a niche in non-competitive sports, others like team sports and others prefer lonely individual sports such as marathon running. It relates to what people want to do.

With regard to the budget for sport, there is a good return for every euro spent on two areas of Irish life. These are the provision of good sports facilities for young people and youth work activities. Putting these together, for every euro spent on these as a nation and economy, we reap rich rewards in the end. There is no doubt that there is a direct correlation between the amount of money spent, the manner in which youth work programmes are organised and the way that sporting activities are organised and integrated.

This is not just related to top class men and women in sports. The best way to combat crime is to provide huge resources in terms of money, manpower and the necessary professionalism. I do not represent a city constituency but towns like Ballinasloe, Tuam and Loughrea. I have always found that crime is lower in a community that is well organised and where there is a good spirit. This can be achieved by local sports facilities, whether GAA, soccer or rugby, and good recreational facilities where young people can congregate in a non-drinking environment. I will come to other aspects of a national and international nature but the underlying principle should be for every half parish in Ireland to get a slice of the cake. As the Minister knows, many people have asked whether Abbotstown is in danger of becoming, for whatever reason, the "favourite son". Will money be pumped into it at the expense of smaller towns? I hope the Government will get the balance right. What is proposed in Abbotstown is right for Ireland at this stage but I hope there will be value for money. Small local communities must also be looked after.

I have heard the Minister speak on a number of occasions in the House and at various openings around the country, to which he is entitled, as would any Minister. He should give himself a pat on the back for the investment the Government has made in sport. We now have the resources to do things we could not even dream of ten years ago. I hope if we are around in ten years' time the position will be the same so we must use the money wisely and get value for what we spend. Some of the projects we have initiated over the years have not come up trumps on that score.

This Bill will create the environment for a new type of professionalism. The Minister said in his introduction to the Bill that sports funding for 2006 would amount to €243 million. That is a great deal of money, but allowing for our increased resources in the form of the tax take it may not be any greater than five or ten years ago. I do not have the figures but they tend to grow accordingly.

The Irish Sports Council received €40.9 million. I saw the Irish Sports Council at the Committee of Public Accounts and am very impressed with what it does. Given what happened in Athens, however, and notwithstanding our athletes put up as good a show as they possibly could, we will have to do better at the next Olympic Games, and even more so at the 2012 games.

It is hugely important for the Irish Sports Council to have funds to allocate to athletes for training. We were not able to do that ten, 12 or 20 years ago because we did not have the money and had other priorities, whichever Government was in power. The countries which had resources at the time and decided sport should be a priority, have done very well as a result. That is why the USA and the UK, New Zealand and Australia have done well. Even relatively poor countries like Russia did extraordinarily well and its achievements at the Olympic Games have been nothing short of astounding.

In that context a country gets what it pays for. We are a small country with a small pool of athletes but in the past ten or 12 years we have had some astonishing victories on the world stage, though they have not happened very often. It is significant that the achievements of Ronnie Delaney, whom I saw on television the other night, in winning the gold medal in the mile race, has not been emulated since 1956. We have gone close on a number of occasions and of course there was Sonia O'Sullivan, among others. Our cyclists were outstanding but sports people like that do not emerge very often. The Irish Sports Council must foster the talent, which undoubtedly exists, from a much earlier age so that more people rise to the surface at both national and international level. If the raw material exists, as I am led to believe it does, the Irish Sports Council can give €3,000 or €6,000 out of its €41 million to an athlete to give up everything to train, though that is not a huge contribution on the part of the State. We will have to make up our minds whether we want to reach the top. There will always be one or two exceptional athletes such as we have had over the years but we must aspire to having a crop of athletes reaching a high standard, if not gold medal standard.

I hope the national sports campus development authority being established by this Bill will help to identify raw talent. I hope that nothing is spared in terms of finance and manpower to nurture that talent to success for Ireland. There are many ways to sell Ireland and one is on a podium. When an athlete receives his or her gold medal every television station in the world will carry it and the tricolour will be raised. No matter who the viewers are they will always associate a country in those circumstances with excellence.

A number of Deputies mentioned that the success of London in being awarded the Olympic Games in 2012 will work wonders for us. If our facilities are good enough, which I hope they will be by that time after six further years of investment in facilities, I envisage many national teams coming to Ireland, maybe a year before the games proper, to train. Many teams will use them immediately prior to the games, which will attract television coverage. It is the next best thing to Ireland having the Olympic Games. It is a huge job to run an Olympic Games and any big city that has done so has been put to the pin of its collar to make a success of it. I am sure the Minister's Department and the Olympic Council of Ireland are preparing for it already. Six years is a very short time in which to plan an Olympic Games.

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