Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There is nothing worse than a self-satisfied Kerryman standing next to one in the Chamber and gloating. However, I offer my congratulations to the Kerry team and all involved in its success.

I was speaking to somebody on the telephone before coming into the Chamber for this debate who, when I indicated the subject of the debate, observed that the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Ring, must have the best job in the country. I responded that one got a different perspective after hearing him talk about the sports capital grant applications he has had to reject. There is a flip side to every job. Having said that, his success in recent years in getting two rounds of sports capital grant funding through has been significant. One cannot please everybody all the time, but the Minister of State has done his best to distribute limited resources across the country as best he could, to clubs and organisations that have used the money wisely and prudently for the benefit of their members.

This is a purposeful Bill whose origins are not very sport-orientated, it being part of the programme of agency rationalisation. Such rationalisation is not always a bad thing. It is not just about penny pinching but also seeing how we might organise ourselves better. Sometimes, by initiating these types of mergers, we can create a more effective and targeted organisation. The purpose of the Bill is to create a new body, Sport Ireland, out of the merger of the Irish Sports Council and the National Sports Campus Development Authority. The combined resources, know-how and experience of those two organisations will now be united in a single entity. While this certainly will have a benefit to the Exchequer in terms of savings, it will also represent a better usage of resources and free up funds for other sporting objectives.

In my research for this debate, I was impressed by the pre-legislative consultation carried out by the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications. While the Department concluded that some of its recommendations are not feasible at this time, they are all worthwhile. One of these is that Sport Ireland should be empowered to explore alternative forms of funding, which would see it functioning more like a company, with a balance sheet and the capacity to leverage itself and raise funds externally. In other words, it would be more like a corporate entity as opposed to a State agency. This would be a good way of creating a dynamic which might see a greater level of private sponsorship of sports in this country. While that issue might not be a matter for this legislation, it is something on which the Department might engage with the new body once it is up and running. The National Sports Campus is a magnificent complex, whose facilities a range of organisations might want to use and be willing to pay for. There is scope to make better use of our assets for the benefit of society at large.

The Oireachtas committee also made a recommendation, which was deemed not particularly relevant to this Bill, that there be scope for Sport Ireland to work on an all-island basis, creating a North-South interconnection or liaison via sports. We have so many connections with Northern Ireland - one might say it is a "national" connection, although it should technically be "international", if one is being legalistic about it - and our sporting counterparts across the Border. It should be a primary objective of the new body to engage with relevant bodies in the North, particularly those organisations such as the GAA which operate on an all-island basis.

Sport can be said to impact every facet of people's lives. The dismal atmosphere that has pervaded in recent years is, finally and fortunately, lifting as we start to see a return to hope and prosperity, fragile and all as that recovery is. In those dark times it was sport which managed to keep communities together and gave people something to do. While clubs and athletes worked hard raising money for their organisations, the average child and adult who partook of a particular sport was able to do so for free. It does not cost anything for a few people to get together with a football or some tennis racquets. One does not have to be a millionaire to partake of the unique unifying force of sport.

Sport also impacts greatly on people's health and helps to create a healthy society. The objective is that people would see exercise not as a chore, but as something they want to do. That will impact on the health budget in future years in terms of moneys spent on health procedures, diabetes treatment and so on. Galway city has the highest percentage of residents who were not born in Ireland. It is a very diverse and multicultural city and it has handled that diversity very well, with new communities from all over the world integrating with longer-established communities. One of the ways it has done this so successfully, without the need for any type of forced integration, is through sport. This is particularly evident in some of the clubs in the east of the city - in Doughiska, for instance - where the new population is well settled. Such engagement strengthens community bonds and has a broader impact in helping to reduce crime, anti-social behaviour and so on.

Sport is a multifaceted issue and there is a role for the Department of Education and Skills in examining how physical education is delivered in schools. I recall being one of those students who was terrified in PE class. I was the fellow who could never quite manage the hurley and was humiliated every Friday morning between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. There should be a way of targeting the education system to ensure we do not put people off exercise but instead encourage pupils to find a sport they enjoy.

Putting the anti-doping guidelines and so forth on a statutory level shows we are serious about the issue and prepared to implement laws that are justiciable. It sends a signal that while we admire success in sport, we do not admire it at any cost. We value those who take the hard road rather than the easy road. I will not use the privilege of the House to say anything untoward, but there have been many instances where the achievements of individual athletes were tainted by the alleged use of drugs. Such practices undermine people's faith in the fairness of the system and creates the impression that those who take short cuts to get ahead may prosper.

6 o’clock

As I said, the genesis of the Bill lies in administrative considerations. It possesses the ability to make an organisation that will actually contribute better to sport in Ireland and it will give the campus an opportunity to flourish, grow, be used not only by the people in the immediate hinterland and in the Pale but by all the people involved in sport in Ireland, and become a kind of centre or a hub for sport, which is a very good thing. The doping provisions in the Bill are very good.

Our interpretation of what sport is ever-evolving. If, 15, 20 or 30 years ago, a Member of this House spoke about sport in the context of education and health policy, he or she would have been laughed out of it, but we have reached a new plateau of awareness of sport and its benefit. This Bill will go some way towards continuing that work. I commend the Bill and the Minister of State's work, his openness and his willingness to engage.

See this speech in context