Plea for investment in sport at grassroots

Irish sport has been corrupted by Government interference and an “obsession” with competing with international superpowers, it was claimed today.

Former Sports Minister Bernard Allen said debate about professional soccer and spectator sports had dominated the agenda for two years, to the detriment of the development of sport at school and club level.

“Olympic achievement is a long term thing and unless we nurture the grassroots and young people it’s not going to happen,” he said.

“We have 2m people and are competing with superpowers,” he said. “But many schools still don’t even have a sports hall, we have clubs in the 21st century with 19th century facilities.”

“Unless we invest at local level in community facilities we will never get a bag of medals.”

The Fine Gael TD told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Arts, Sport and Tourism he believed Ireland had exhausted its talents and time in debating issues such as the proposed Abbotstown stadium and the use of Croke Park when it should have been concentrating on ploughing resources into local facilities.

He warned nothing would change and Ireland would be having the same discussions about the Olympics in 2020 unless it changed tack and focused on encouraging young talent.

To redress the balance, he claimed the allocation of sports funding should be given to the Irish Sports Council. He said until that happened there would be huge disruptions to sporting infrastructures.

Mr Allen also called for a national inventory of sporting facilities to ensure they were shared and used to their full capacity.

“Sport has been corrupted in this country by the Sky Sports syndrome where it seems Sky dictates the days and times of matches and the behaviour of people now who gear their activities for sport around the time the match will be broadcast,” he said.

“Sport was corrupted the day that Government started to interfere with sporting organisations and it started with the 50 million from JP McManus.

“I believe there was an agenda there to build a stadium which in my view would have been a white elephant, would have consumed about 1.1bn of taxpayers’ money. The agenda was professional soccer and that consumed the debate on sport in this country for two years and would have consumed all the resources for sport into the foreseeable future if it had gone ahead.”

He added that he believed Croke Park would have been open by now had it not been for that interference.

Dublin North Jim Glennon TD criticised the use of sports funding for the development of Lansdowne Road and said it would do nothing for Irish sport.

He claimed the showbusiness side of the game was draining resources from grassroots level.

“It’s more geared for tourism and the showbusiness end of both games,” he said. “I don’t believe we should be subsidising it out of our own budget.”