Shane Cassells (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A couple of weeks ago, a match in the North Eastern Football League between Bay FC and a team from Ballyjamesduff was abandoned when, wait for this now, the referee was kung fu kicked by one of the Ballyjamesduff players. The shocking incident was captured on camera and shared widely on social media. It became a talking point for a number of days on sports broadcasts and received extensive press coverage. The fallout from this is that on Sunday night, the Louth branch of the Irish Soccer Referees Society withdrew its services for the foreseeable future. The branch stated that the league has a duty of care towards the officials refereeing the league which is not being met and as referees cannot be assured of their safety, it will not be accepting any appointments in this league until such assurances are given. There will now be mass cancellations of games and major disruptions this weekend and for the future. It is now ten months since the report on abuse of officials previously referred to by Senator Malcolm Byrne was laid before the Houses.

The report was sparked by another referees strike in the North Dublin Schoolboys/Girls League. One of the key recommendations by Ms Mary O'Connor, CEO of the Federation of Irish Sport, is that clubs who have these terrible egregious breaches of discipline should be barred from access to sports capital funding. We need to take that seriously. If leagues, whether it be in soccer, the GAA or any other sport, cannot get their house in order, we need to press this matter. I did so with the departmental officials at the time and they were wishy-washy at best when it came to it. I ask that the report, which was laid before the Houses ten months ago, becomes an item on our agenda. We need to bring in the Minister responsible for sport to discuss this issue because the clear recommendation of barring clubs from funding needs to be pressed because they are not taking it seriously if a referee can be kung fu kicked on a sports pitch in Ireland.