Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party for tabling the motion. Anyone who is involved in sport recognises that a club having a home, having its own place and having security of tenure gives it the capacity to plan, organise, grow and develop. I commend the mentors, coaches, background volunteers and all those who give thousands of hours free and voluntarily. All they ask for are facilities. Sadly, for most football clubs facilities are not available. There has been progress and recently I attended the opening of an amazing facility in Porterstown in Fingal. It is a brilliant facility but there are too few of them. Other longer established clubs have worked very hard for decades.

Over the decades, Corduff, Verona, St. Mochta's and Hartstown Huntstown have developed their own facilities with support from the council and sports capital grants. However, many of these clubs still have just basic changing rooms with showers and maybe a container as a clubroom or toilets. They need much more. They need all-weather facilities and they need to be able to train in winter. They need more pitches to cater for the number of children coming to play the game. There has been an explosion in particular of young girls and women playing football and sport in general. This will only get better with Ireland's women's team in the World Cup this month in Australia. I wish them the best. What will we do to facilitate these numbers? When will we get real about investing in sports for our communities, and mostly working-class communities at that?

Recently in Fingal we have been advocating for toilets in our park for Tyrrelstown FC and Tyrrelstown GAA club. Imagine in this day and age we were trying to battle so that children could have toilet facilities in the local park. This shows how badly serviced football clubs are and continue to be. I commend the motion and I hope there will be investment in football and other sports.

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