Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

To be fair to Fingal County Council, it was very engaged with Swim Ireland when it came to the pop-up pool in Donabate. That is the trialling of the new concept of delivery around transportable pools. A modular pool is a scaled-up version of that and a more permanent fixture. As a coastal community in Fingal, it is important to have access to swimming pool infrastructure. I take the Senator’s point on that. That is why in the next six months, by year-end, we will have the swimming strategy published. That will, as a key component, look at the infrastructural opportunities and the modular components which are happening right across the world and which we need to embrace in Ireland. As part of that, there will be opportunities to identify the deficits geographically and how we can provide new infrastructure. Then we will try to negotiate a budget line to achieve that.

I appreciate the feedback the Senator has given on the necessity to deliver for a community that currently has that infrastructure gap. We are keen to address many of those issues as part of the national swimming strategy. There are new and exciting opportunities to deliver quickly to communities when it comes to swimming pool infrastructure in terms of the new modular pools, with much more affordable opportunities within communities. That is something the group will be working on in the coming weeks and months.