Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)

Miriam Lord once described sport as the greatest of all Ministries because you get to tour every parish in the country and see best practice. In the last two rounds of sports capital funding, certainly in my own county - I think it is probably the same around the country - every group that had a decent application put together properly got funding of some sort or the other. It is transformative. As other speakers have said, from grassroots level and tiny tots up to people who play sports to an elite level and represent county and country, if you invest in sport, you invest in people's welfare and also their joy.

I thank the Minister of State's predecessors, Deputy Chambers and Deputy Byrne, and I am sure he will do an equally great job. In the last round of funding, clubs like Broadford GAA, Shannon Town United, Cratloe GAA Club and, in my home parish, Parkfield FC and Parteen-Meelick GAA club all benefited. My children cross over the border once a week into Limerick to play for Shannon rugby and the joy that gives them is great.

I will make a couple of quick points. I would like to see dance included in this funding. When I was a primary school teacher, we used to get the children to do an annual fitness test. The children in our classes who danced had an incredible level of fitness. We have classified scouting as a sporting activity and we have brought golf courses in. I think Irish dancing should be brought in and considered to be in the realm of sport fitness and wellness.

As someone who taught physical education for years, I know it is well and good overhauling the curriculum but there are strands in that 1999 curriculum I taught, such as aquatics, outdoor adventures, athletics and all these kinds of things, for which there is no toolset to teach them. When I was teaching and a child was struggling with spelling or reading, we would have certain pathways of intervention. Equally, if they had mathematical problems, we would suspect dyscalculia and intervene, but as a nation we need to start talking about physical literacy. If a child is not able to benchmark certain activities like throwing, the gate of their movement, catching, squatting - basic things - they can come back and cause difficulty later in life, such as joint pain and all sorts of movement issues. There is currently no intervention pathway for those. Anyone who has done a coaching course, be it for GAA or rugby or soccer, will know that one of the fundamental things you will deal with is the fundamental movements of physical literacy. As a country that has a very deep educational policy on physical education and good resourcing of it, it is a point we are a little mute on. I would love to see it embodied into how we fund things. Irish dancing would be a great inclusion in the next round of funding.

See this speech in context