Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Yes. It was more than the hare. As far as I could ascertain, many dogs were also sitting when they should have been running, or running when they should have been sitting.

Although everyone else appears to be in favour of the measure, I am not happy that amateur sportspersons face the same drugs regime as that which is imposed on professionals, or that intercounty GAA players can be tested out of season in the same manner as professional sportspersons. While I have no one in mind, young fellows who are found to have used cannabis in the previous week could have seriously jeopardised their sporting careers. Although I do not advocate such activity, there is a difference between someone who plays a game for love and fun and for the sake of the team to whom he or she is loyal, and those who are full-time professional athletes. I refer to the obligation of amateurs to be subjected to similar regimes off-season as those who are professionals, particularly regarding the overlap of illegal substances with performance enhancing substances. Any serious sportsperson who smokes dope on a regular basis is a dope and will not succeed because he or she does not show the requisite respect for his or own physical well-being. However, this is a valid issue for all athletes and probably for amateur athletes in particular. While I am aware that the GAA was somewhat slow in this respect and was criticised for it, there are genuine issues involved. Moreover, I will not omit the fact that the players sought — it is a pity the Government did not grant it — a special tax allowance to reflect the extra expenditure involved.

The GAA has done remarkably well, sometimes because of itself and sometimes despite itself. However, these games are the national games of a small country and constitute a small minority of the games played in the world. Hence, they are very precious. At present, they are very strong and in recent years, women's Gaelic football has been one of the GAA's great successes. I urge the Minister and his officials, regardless of whatever Government is in power, to avoid modelling our systems overly rigidly on those of countries in which the dominant team sports are professional worldwide sports. Our dominant team sports are not professional worldwide sports. We must continue to revisit models of how to support sport in that context.

I do not believe I have reached my disputed 15 minutes, but I am about to conclude. Before I do, I wish to discuss a detail I have raised on a number of occasions. Schedule 1 contains a long description in words of the land in Abbotstown. Surely we can organise it so we can use maps in legislation instead of long lists of words, such as those contained in Schedule 1, which include, "the land conveyed by an Indenture of Conveyance dated the 2nd day of January 1951 made between the Right Honourable James Hans Baron Holmpatrick".

In terms of the action the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reforms is taking on sorting out land ownership, it is time we were able to use properly marked, identified and registered maps as a description in legislation instead of, in this case, a page-long written description. The Bill establishing the digital hub contained a two page list of names of little townlands, areas and parishes in the centre of Dublin which could have been described far more coherently in a one page map.

In principle, I welcome the Bill. I did not bother to discuss the more colourful events of recent years. Hopefully, they are history. I have only one piece of advice for the Minister, namely, given the level of public expenditure, the Government could do with as high a level of project management skills in its possession as it has accountancy skills. The public service has many accountants but no project management team of the same skill and capacity. Project management is as important during the event as accountancy is before and after it.