Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will make a tangential connection. The group of people I am talking about here are not making a request for the use of the Government jet, but they deserve a bit of support from the State. I commend Jack Marley, who is the first Irish amateur boxer to qualify for the Olympic Games in the heavyweight division. He is from Monkstown Boxing Club in my local area. I also congratulate Seán Mari, who is from the same club. He did not qualify at the weekend but has a couple of other opportunities to do so. It is a tremendous achievement. The boxers are not looking to use the Government jet to get to the Olympics or some of the competitions they engage in. I attended the celebration in Sallynoggin last night, and was talking to Jack, Seán and their coaches. The thing that came across again and again, from the coaches and the boxers themselves, is that in order to reach a level where they are representing Ireland in the Olympics, they have to give up a huge amount of their time. Jack is 20 years old and there are lot of costs involved. The boxers have to give up time working and so on. Often, they are not offered great financial support to do that. In many cases, they have to train in very poor facilities. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is finally moving towards giving them their own purpose-built facility, but many other amateur boxing clubs around the country do not have those sorts of facilities. I just think that as a tribute to the sort of success that Jack Marley has achieved, we should look at ways to support our young talent in boxing and other areas of sport who are reaching that very high level but often do not get the kind of financial support from the Government that allows them to continue at that level.

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