Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)

I refer to the issue of quangos. A hands-off approach is taken; it is out there and we have no responsibility. Of course there is responsibility but Deputies elected to this House cannot access the information directly from the Irish Sports Council. We must go through convoluted routes to try to get to the root of it, and for the most part we fail. The report from one agency involved in this, the Irish Sports Council - the body that receives money directly - will go to the Minister. Will we have access to the report and will it be published? As Deputy Mitchell stated, that is one side of the argument, which may have as many as three sides. We had protracted discussions on this on Committee Stage and, from what we heard, it was an unsavoury scenario to say the least. It is important that we did not get into the nitty-gritty because there were serious legal issues involved. Whatever the amount, it is referred to in newspapers as being between €500,000 and €700,000, a vast amount of money. At the same time, the Irish women's basketball team is not able to access a small amount of money in order to promote the team and do its work. It seems an incredible disaster for sport that this amount of money is wasted in this way.

I did not catch what the Minister said in regard to Just Sport Ireland. Perhaps she said she had no role in this. It is important there is a role for some agency in a matter where money ends up in the pockets of the lawyers. Why can we not find another route and why can certain conditions not be applied to funding for an organisation in receipt of €52 million last year? Sporting organisations will say it is not a large amount of money when spread over a large number of organisations, but it is a significant amount of taxpayers' money. We have allowed something in the order of €700,000 to be spent on a legal case that should have been managed internally through an organisation like Just Sport Ireland.

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