Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I ask Deputy Feighan to correct the record. There is not only one Rovers; there are the champions, and they play in Tallaght.

The era of poor old soccer, football, being at the back of the queue has ended. I commend my colleague, Deputy Ó Ríordáin, on his passion and commitment to this - not this week, last week or last month but throughout both his teaching life and his political life. That was evident in his opening statement. The mismanagement at the top of football for years, we believe, has now ended, and there is confidence in the years ahead. The years of abandonment and ignorance of our League of Ireland, we believe, has now ended. We see that with the sellout crowds we have week in, week out, the increased fanbase and the increased reach our national league has. The decades of negligence, the mismanagement at the very top and the abandonment on the part of the political class of football in terms of our grassroots, we believe, has now come to an end.

Therefore, we bring forward this motion not because football is in a state of crisis but because this is the moment to strike. We have the report from the FAI. We believe in it. We believe that football, from the grassroots through the League of Ireland up to the top, can make a real difference. If we miss this opportunity, this chance, we may never get it again. We therefore ask the Government to take this motion seriously and to think of it beyond being just a Private Members' motion on a Wednesday morning by just another Opposition party. This is our chance. When the bunting comes out and is put away after the Women's World Cup, which we are all excited about, this cannot go away as a political issue and a political commitment. Football, for too long, has been in the political shadows, a working-class sport rooted in working-class communities but which cuts through across all classes. We will see that in the coming weeks and we have seen it many times before, but football has always had to do that through struggle, through cutting through systemic struggle that we in politics have helped create but that we in politics must fix.

We know all the clubs in our own areas, and I am happy to see clubs from my constituency such as Balbriggan FC, Swords Manor, St. Ita's, Rush Athletic, Swords Celtic and River Valley Rangers here today. They are volunteers committed to their clubs and their communities. They know the impact football has. The report the FAI commissioned sees the impact football has - the social impact, the economic impact and the health impact - so we need to support it. We need to do so, as Deputy Ó Ríordáin said, with cold hard cash. We have passion for this sport up and down our country throughout all our families, but we have never seen that reflected in the political structures or systems. Again, some of that has been the fault of football itself, particularly of mismanagement right at the top in the FAI, but, as we said, those eras have ended.

I have a football-mad sister who played football everywhere she could. Her five-year-old daughter is so excited about the few weeks ahead and is asking where she can play, where she can just use her feet. That is what she wants to do. She wants to play football. We have to ensure she can.

I commend Fingal County Council, my local council, on its transition year programme. It is the first county council to roll out a programme for transition year students to ensure that girls in school in particular have a chance to play and to commit to and to continue to play football into their late teens and early adulthood, when we know from what Lisa Fallon told us two weeks ago that the drop-off in participation rates explodes.

I see passion in the people in my life for this sport, whether it is my family attending League of Ireland matches week in, week out, or whether it is Carol Reynolds in my office, who has been playing football from a young girl right through her teens into her late 30s, her entire life committed to a game that ignored her and her fellow players. She is so happy to see where women's football is now but she does not want to see that lost beyond this summer. We see the flags for Abbie Larkin as we drive through areas like Ringsend already, two weeks out. We need to support this game. We across both sides of the House need to support this game this summer, next year and in the years ahead. We need football, the beautiful game, to be our national sport. As Deputy Ó Ríordáin said, football is Ireland.

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