Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party)
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36. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht for an update on female representation on the boards of funded national governing bodies of sport, local sports partnerships, and other sporting funded bodies. [24010/24]

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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Addressing female participation at all levels in sport is an important element of the National Sports Policy and a core priority for myself and Minister Catherine Martin. That includes women in leadership positions such as board members of National Governing Bodies (NGBs), Local Sports Partnership (LSP) and other funded sporting bodies.

The most recent Sports Action Plan set a target for all NGBs to achieve 40% gender representation on the boards by the end of 2023. It is a priority to enable women to take more leadership positions in sport and the 40% target reflects this prioritisation.

The most recent gender representation snapshot was published by Sport Ireland in April and is available on Sport Ireland's website www.sportireland.ie . This snapshot shows that the overall percentage of women on boards across the sport sector in Ireland is now 45%. That is a 3% increase on the previous snapshot in December 2023, which had marked the first time there was female representation on every board.

For NGBs alone, the average percentage is 44%, up from 24% in 2019.

For the first time, the Football Association of Ireland, the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Irish Rugby Football Union, the three largest field sport organisations, have now all surpassed 40% representation of females on their boards.

Of the 100 sporting organisations encompassed by the gender representation snapshot, 86 have now achieved or exceeded the 40% target, including 61 NGBs and 25 LSPs. It should be noted that 50% of state funding (excluding Women in Sport funding) will be withheld from National Governing Bodies and Local Sports Partnerships until such a time as 40% gender representation is achieved by them.

Sport Ireland will continue to provide support to NGBs towards achieving the target of 40% and will monitor and report on progress.