Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Táim an-sásta a bheith anseo leo inniu chun plé a dhéanamh ar an ábhar ríthábhachtach seo. I condemn any form of abuse in sport, including online abuse, racism, discrimination or inappropriate behaviour towards anyone involved in sport. Referees, officials and players are an integral part of our sporting structure and deserve to be respected for the important role they play in sport. Abuse of officials or players is wrong and should not be tolerated. Everybody involved in sport deserves to be treated with respect and should not feel unsafe or threatened from their officiating or participating in games.

I am concerned that despite some genuine efforts of sporting organisations to address the issue, we are continuing to see incidents of abuse and violence aimed at referees and officials. What concerns me, in particular, is that we are seeing a great deal of this - by no means all of it - at underage games. A very large number of referees and officials are volunteers and without them most sports could not operate effectively or, indeed, survive.It is important that sporting organisations across all sports provide a safe environment for referees, officials, and players, and where abusive and threatening behaviour is aimed at them, appropriate action must be taken. I urge all clubs and sporting bodies to ensure that referees, officials and players are respected. Each of the field sports promotes respect programmes within the sports. Sporting organisations must lead the way and ensure that respect remains part of the culture of sports. Where abuse does occur, sporting bodies must take action and use the disciplinary procedures and sanctions that exist within their organisation to ensure that those responsible are held to account.

I note the sanctions that were handed down by the GAA in recent weeks following an alleged assault on an official at an underage hurling match in March. I hope the suspensions and fines that have been imposed will act as a deterrent against similar incidents in the future, but more needs to be done.

I want to clarify that Sport Ireland's oversight role relates to governance and national governing bodies, NGBs. It does not have a direct role across discipline and violence. This is the serious responsibility of national governing bodies in relation to their sports. They are independent, they are autonomous organisations, and they all have their own policies and procedures in this regard. I accept that sporting organisations are working hard to address this issue. On Tuesday, I convened a meeting with the leaders of the Football Association of Ireland, FAI, GAA and Irish Rugby Football Union, IRFU, along with the CEO of Sport Ireland, for a discussion on how best to tackle violence and racism in sport. We had a very constructive discussion, and I hope this will continue, in preventing racism and violence from occurring in sport, and to see what we do when it happens. I am grateful to the organisations and to Dr. Una May for the valuable input at that meeting.

As a sporting community, it is essential that we show there is no place for violence and racism in sport. Sport fosters a great sense of belonging in our communities and we must never allow incidents of racism and violence to undermine the positive power of sport. I acknowledge that significant integration of ethnic minorities and immigrants into this country is happening through our sports organisations. This deserves to be acknowledged in all of our concerns about certain incidents that are happening.

I have urged to put in place whatever measures are needed in this regard. There were some interesting elements of good practice from sports bodies, which I believe could be shared around. The message from me is that there should be zero tolerance for racism and violence, that sports organisations should use whatever disciplinary procedures they have, and that referees should feel empowered to use the rule book to its full extent. I have seen this happen in a number of games recently, which is positive, but referees should also feel empowered by their NGBs.

Integrity and ethics in sport is an important area of focus for Sport Ireland. Sport Ireland is planning to provide guidance for NGBs on the best approach in this area. As we have said, while they have overall responsibility for this, I accept that it is important the Government and Sport Ireland also take whatever actions we can to ensure that integrity as a value and behaviour is evident across all levels of sport. Codes of conduct are an integral part of any club and sporting organisation. Codes of conduct can set standards of behaviour. Codes of conduct can set out expectations for everybody involved, from administrators, coaches, officials to players, parents and spectators. To help sporting bodies tackle the issue relating to codes of conduct, officials in Sport Ireland are convening a working group that is developing a national code of conduct template across Irish sport. We expect progress on that in relatively near order. Sporting organisations can then use the template code of conduct to promote good practice within their sport. This is an important action that will greatly help sporting bodies to address the issue of abuse of referees and officials. I have asked Sport Ireland to progress this work as quickly as possible. Sport Ireland is working on finalising the membership of the working group, and it expects the working group to be in place next week. The work will be completed in a short timeframe and I have been informed that the template will be available by the end of May.

I urge all NGBs of sport to use the template to develop a code of conduct appropriate to their sport, along with ensuring that disciplinary procedures and sanctions are used when necessary. The development of a code of conduct for each sport will be a positive step towards eliminating abuse.

I had mentioned briefly the sports capital programme, and it has come up in this particular context. Members will be aware of the programme, which the programme for Government commits to continuing. Members have asked about the timing of the next round. A full review has been undertaken and we hope to publish that review very shortly. It is basically ready to go and I believe it will be published in the coming days. One of the issues under consideration is whether adherence to the code of conduct for the elimination of abuse towards match officials should be considered when future sports capital allocations are made. It is certainly something we can look at in the future. One of the difficulties I have with the sports capital programme at the moment is that there is a computer programme, the online sports capital register, OSCAR, system, which Members will be familiar with, but it is coming to the end of its life and perhaps we will get one more round out of it. There will be a lot more scope to make these types of changes in future rounds. It is certainly something we are going to look at.

In recent times, online abuse has become an increasing concern. This is not acceptable and while it is not unique to sport, it cannot be tackled in isolation in relation to sport. The Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill was enacted in December 2022 and the new media regulator, which is Coimisiún na Meán, was formally established in March. Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland's new authority with responsibility for overseeing the regulation of broadcasting and video on-demand services. It includes the new regulatory framework for online safety. The commission will be responsible for developing online safety codes with the aim of reducing the risk of the exposure of users to harmful online content. In this context, harmful online content may relate to material under one or more categories of content as outlined in the Act. One such category relates to online content linked to an existing offence in Irish law. On this basis, online safety codes will be aimed at reducing the availability of online content by which someone sends a threatening or grossly offensive communication to another person, contrary to a relevant offence under the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, among other offence specific and non-offence specific content. This is very important and will have an impact on sport as well.

I assure the House that the Department and I will continue to work closely with support Ireland and other stakeholders. We had a meeting this week with the three main organisations. We will have meetings with referees and with other sports bodies and with the Federation of Irish Sport in the coming weeks. We will continue to engage on this to stamp this out. There is definitely evidence of good practice in some sports and there is a lot we can do to spread that to all sports to get rid of this, quite frankly, and to absolutely eliminate it in underage sport. When people did the analysis, that was the one shocking thing about this. There is a huge volume of this affecting underage players and their coaches, and referees on pitches. Some of the online abuse has been directed at underage players. This is absolutely outrageous given the harm it can do. I look forward to hearing what Seanadóirí have to say. It is an ongoing process but one we will continue to work on and not just talk about.