Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. I concur with all other Senators that increased funding is needed for sporting facility infrastructure. It is well known that it is important for young people to be involved in sports and to keep active for their well-being, physical and mental health and the benefits in later life of having been involved in sport. There was a recent announcement regarding the European Championships that will have a knock-on effect on soccer in particular in Ireland. Will there be significant funding to increase the infrastructure on the ground? By that, I mean League of Ireland clubs, especially in rural areas, and to increase their infrastructure and facilities and put in centres of excellence in the likes of Athlone and Longford. Those clubs are fighting hard to keep above water and fight above their level much of the time.This was particularly the case in my own county a long number of years ago when we had a couple of successful FAI cup campaigns. It is important that the funding is put into the infrastructure. It has a knock-on effect of having European championships in the country.

The Minister of State mentioned in his introduction the large-scale sport infrastructure fund and how no more applications were being taken. At present, we are looking at trying to finalise those that are there. However, it would be important to give an indication of when that fund is going to come again. There are a lot of organisations, including sporting organisations and county boards. My own county board in Longford spent more than €1 million in the last number of weeks to purchase 30 acres to develop a centre of excellence for the future of GAA sports in the county. It would be important that we could give a timeline for counties to know that it is coming, although I know the finance is not going to be in place in the next number of years.

I concur with Senator Dooley with regard to the GAA, LGFA, and Camogie Association. I was a member of central council for a long number of years and I am very much in favour of the one club model. The sooner that comes, the better. I am very supportive of it.

With regard to the sports capital, I know there have been a significant number of applications but something I would like to see are ladies facilities for sports clubs. The Minister of State visited Longford rugby club a number of weeks ago where I met with him. Where clubs are putting in infrastructure to increase the participation levels, some sort of higher weighting level should be given to those applications. Something I have spoken about at the Oireachtas committee on a number of occasions is the drop-off in female participation in the teenage years. We had a very successful 2020 campaign that was funded outside of State funding. We need to look at ramping that up again and putting some support measures in place to keep more females participating in sports, particularly in the teenage years when they tend to drop away from some of the field sports, in particular.

I want to compliment the sports partnerships throughout the country. They do a massive amount of work on the ground in getting people involved in many of the minority sports. Any investment in that is welcome. It is important too, and this point was made to me, that much of their investment seems to be annual rather than long-term multiannual to be able to hold on to staff. I compliment them on the work they do. They managed to get me out on a lake in a canoe last year and got me home safely.