Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The 2024 allocation for sport and recreation amounts to €181.837 million. Increased funding is being provided to sporting bodies to ensure their recovery post pandemic and to enable them to face the challenges of today. An extra €2 million is being provided for the national governing bodies for sport. The funding targeted at increasing female participation is being doubled. This means that the women in sport programme fund goes from €2 million to €4 million. The increased funding will target areas such as participation, coaching, officiating, leadership and visibility.

As 2024 is both an Olympic and Paralymic year, there is an additional €1 million in funding to support our high-performance athletes on their journey to Paris. There is also continued investment in major sports events. Obviously, we were very pleased yesterday to be formally confirmed as the co-hosts of UEFA's Euro 2028 championship. This is largest single international sporting event held in Ireland and is one of the largest such events in the world.

What we are about in this Department is sport for all. We want to make sure sport reaches deep into every corner of society and that participation is increased. We want to improve everyone's physical and mental well-being as well as improve integration in the community, and sport has a huge role to play in that regard. Budget 2024 delivers on our sport for all approach and I welcome the investment in our sporting community.

In the context of the Department of Education and physical education, PE, I am the first Minister of State with special responsibility for PE in that Department. I am delighted to announce increased funding for the expansion of the active school flag programme. Budget 2024 will support more schools to get more active more often. As a result of the increased funding for the aforementioned programme, I look forward to seeing more flags awarded to primary schools throughout the country and the growth of the post-primary programme from pilot phase to full roll-out. This is not just a flag that schools get for a couple of weeks' work in transition year. This is a multi-year programme within schools. It takes a lot of effort from both students and teachers but can make real and lasting change. It is one of the most impressive programmes I have seen and I was really pleased to advance it. I thank the Minister, Deputy Martin, and the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, for their co-operation in putting forward some of my priorities. They have both been very helpful in that regard. In education, we are going to see further developments in the PE curriculum and further initiatives as well with the budget that has been agreed. The same is true for sport. I look forward to a great sporting year, not just this year but next year as well.

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