Joe Conway (Independent)

I would be delighted to take a small trip down boithrín na smaointe for a little bit of nostalgia. Admittedly, the whole world of sport in Ireland has gone through some significant development over the last few decades. I want to paint a small picture of what sport was like for somebody like myself who went to a boarding school in the midlands of Ireland back in the 1960s. Even though St. Mel's College in Longford was a diocesan seminary, it still harboured two distinct religions. One was the dominant one, which was Roman Catholicism, and the second was the GAA. As Caesar said about Gaul, Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, which translates as "All Gaul is divided into three parts", St. Mel's College in the 1960s was also divided into three parts: the prep field, the junior field and the senior field. Everybody, boarder or day boy, belonged to one of those. You graduated up through the ranks in the toughest of winters, the most inclement of weather and the muddiest of midland fields, and at the end of it you were rewarded with a communal cold shower. That was sport in Ireland in the 1960s. Now we have a situation where sport has developed wonderfully but not all for the better I might say. If we talk to anybody in the Déise Gaeltacht they would describe a good night as "oíche le spórt, scléip agus craic" but when we talk about sport oftentimes we are missing, as the Irish idiom would have it, that sport is about fun and participation. The fun, in many instances, is now gone out of it because there is so much of the driven in sport, there is so much of the performance, there is so much of the massive rewards for sports persons, and there is the huge investment in television and sporting events. It is easy to lose sight of what sport essentially is, which is for making people strong, well and happy.

I am going to traverse a couple of the areas where I believe we are succeeding and where we might be leaving a lot to be desired in our attitudes to sport. As Senator Ní Chuilinn mentioned, sport is worth a huge amount of money to the Irish economy, probably standing at somewhere near €5 billion. There are indications of great growth in the sporting sector with tourism, the natural productivity that comes into the workforce, the decrease in mortality, the lowering of absenteeism, and the lower risk of communicable disease. Some 60,000 to 70,000 people are employed in full-time employment within the sports sector and hundreds of thousands of volunteers give up reckonable hours for sporting activities. In this country of ours we are getting on for a million people who are over the age of 65. In this regard and in sport we are falling down badly because the indications are that there is a huge drop-off after the age of 50 in sporting participation in this country.It is much more serious in the Republic than it is in Northern Ireland. Taking the whole island into consideration, the drop-off in sporting participation in the over-50s is seriously negligent in contrast to many of our European neighbours and the more enlightened economies, such as Iceland, which invests massively. I will talk about that in a second.

Talking about the older sections in society, there was a grant scheme called age and opportunity in the national grant scheme, which gave out moneys to clubs and societies that were dealing with older citizens. In County Waterford, where I have been living for the last 40-odd years, I note the amount of money given to 22 or 23 clubs that deal with older people's activities was something like €6,000. That would not buy too many O'Neill's all-Ireland footballs for each club. The Minister is coming in today talking about the great investment in Irish sport. Admittedly there is much being done but when we take it in the round, I think about €79 per capitain Ireland is being spent, or 0.4% of the national budget, on sport. I think that is about half of the EU average of 0.8%. When I was trying to bone up on this last night, the most enlightened country I found was Iceland which spends 1.5% of its national budget on sporting activity in the main, with huge investment in those over 50 who may well benefit most from sporting investment. As we all know, when people get older they are more prone to osteoporosis, isolation and social and psychological complaints that may beset them after the loss of a partner. We should not be overly proud of the resources we put at the disposal of the older section of the population to counter the great ravages that time takes on their minds and bodies in rural Ireland and in the towns and cities as well.

I am making an appeal that we have more enlightened thinking about sport. We see it as competitive, driven. We see the clubs, the big three as Senator Ní Chuilinn mentioned. While it is wonderful to see all the work they do, I like to think about the people on the other side of sport who could get enjoyment, camaraderie and support from sport, and who would use it to defeat isolation and engender better health in their old age. All of those benefits would come from being attracted back into sport. The female cohort, as they get older, are statistically far less likely to be attracted back into sporting activities. A few weeks ago two ladies came for a cup of coffee with me in Tramore. They wanted to set up a pétanque club. Heavens to Murgatroyd, I did not know what pétanque was but they told me what it was and it is ideally suited to people of older years. I hope they are facilitated in every way with Sport for All and the Waterford Sports Partnership. I hope they get every success.

I want to talk a little bit about the great contribution of my own former profession, the teaching force of Ireland, particularly the primary teachers and the work they do, in particular with Cumann na mBunscol all around the country. The explosion of popularity in Gaelic games in the last few decades is largely attributable to the work done by Cumann na mBunscol in all the counties. They say here in Dublin that GAA is now the new rugby, the middle-class sport in Dublin. I am not too sure of that but it is very attractive for youngsters, and I applaud that. It would not be happening if it were not for the teachers of Ireland who for absolutely no reward invest their time and effort into putting children out on the field from September to June in all weathers and against all circumstances.

Senators all around the House and probably the Minister of State will agree with me that there is one dark side of sport becoming much more prevalent. I see it the odd time I get a chance to watch something on Sky Sports. It is the profusion of advertising for gambling on all sporting occasions. I have seen colleagues in teaching lose their homes and marriages, all sorts of things, due to a spiral down into gambling debts. We have to take a serious look at the financing of a lot of the sporting activities and the big betting companies that are literally making a killing on this. We need to regulate the gambling industry. It runs contrary to the whole essence of sport, namely fun, spórt, scléip agus craic, the enjoyment of life.