Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I will be very clear — wherever it is practical to do so, which should be the case. The big obstacles we talked about earlier were insurance and litigation.

I was recently in the University of Limerick, DCU and UCD. They are using their facilities for sports. The new schools being built by the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, in the Fingal area have increased space and facilities. One of the best schools I have ever seen in the country is in Cherry Orchard. It has pre-school, after school, cooking and play facilities.

As a policy, I am totally opposed to elitist groups saying something is built for them and locking the door, letting no one else in and only having it open for a few hours each week. There are plenty of those facilities. We have been trying through the concept of active citizenship to have multi-purpose and multi-use facilities. It has worked well under the youth facilities fund. We worked with the local authorities where they managed it. The money was not going to one organisation and every organisation could participate. A number of those facilities have worked very well. If we do that progressively as we give money for recreation, sport and leisure, which covers a lot because it can range from the very young to the very old and is gender neutral, we can improve facilities greatly.

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