Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)

The first requirement is for the county council to be proactive. While I certainly will be proactive in trying to ensure we secure funding and deliver swimming pools throughout the country, we will only be able to deal with applications that are on our desk. It is highly likely we will not be able to deal with every application, given the level of demand, but we will be doing our best to see real development in this regard.

There is no doubt there are significant gaps in swimming pool infrastructure throughout the country. Swimming is the only national sport at the moment that has a dedicated national strategy, the national swimming strategy, which was published approximately one year ago. As part of that strategy, one of the action points was to develop a sense and audit of the swimming pool facilities across the country. Swim Ireland is undertaking that audit. It is assessing where swimming pool facilities and the most significant gaps are. That will inform how we step out to try to address that. We want to get to a situation where everyone has the opportunity to be able to access facilities and learn to swim. We want people to be able to participate in swimming throughout their life, both in Monaghan and throughout the country.

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