Cork city and county councils may unite to seek a second Sport Ireland Campus in Cork

Mayor of County Cork is to seek support from Cork City Lord Mayor for a joint effort to persuade the Government to build a sport campus to 'serve the southern half of the country'

IRFU’s high performance centre, one of the facilities at the Sport Ireland Campus in Dublin. Cork County Council unanimously approved a motion to seek the development of a similar national campus in Cork to serve the south of the country. Picture: Brendan Moran/Sportsfile

The Mayor of County Cork is to seek support from the City’s Lord Mayor and his council for a joint effort to persuade the Government to build a second Sport Ireland campus in the region.

The county council is meanwhile writing to Taoiseach Micheál Martin and sport minister Patrick O’Donovan requesting the move.

It comes after Social Democrats county councillor Eamonn Horgan received unanimous cross-party support calling for the development. He said Cork continues to lack the level of sporting infrastructure expected of Ireland’s largest county and the economic capital of the south.

“A county of Cork’s size and sporting pedigree should not be without facilities that are considered standard elsewhere,” Mr Horgan said.

“Athletes should not have to travel across the country to access high-performance supports, sports science expertise or specialist training environments. Nor should growing communities be left without the recreational infrastructure needed to promote healthier lifestyles.

“We have three Olympic standard swimming pools in the country. Two of these are in universities, and the other is in the Sport Ireland campus in Dublin. The last of these opened in 2012. What worries me is that there are no more in the pipeline, none being planned,” he said.

Mr Horgan said he would like to see a large-scale, state-of-the-art regional serving development.

“This is not just for Cork. It’s needed for proper, fair regional development in sports facilities. It would serve the southern half of the country. There’s a huge deficit in sporting infrastructure in the county and in the southern region in general.”

The Sport Ireland Campus in Blanchardstown in Dublin is the country’s national hub for high-performance training, as well as local community recreation. 

“A second Sport Ireland national campus would be an investment in the entire south of Ireland. It would support athletes from Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Clare, Tipperary, and Waterford while creating jobs, attracting international events, boosting tourism, and encouraging greater participation in sport and physical activity,” Mr Horgan added.

He said planning for this has to start now as the newly revised County Development Plan envisages the population of Co Cork will grow by 100,000 by 2024.

Labour councillor Ronan Sheehan said: “This motion should be pursued aggressively by whatever means we can find.”

Mayor of County Cork, Fianna Fáil councillor Bernard Moynihan, said he would be meeting Cork City’s Lord Mayor Damian Boylan next week and would seek the city council’s support for the development. County council CEO Moira Murrell also supported the proposal and said she and her officials would raise it with their counterparts in City Hall.

Mr Horgan added: “I am calling on the Government with Sport Ireland to commission a feasibility study into the development of a second Sport Ireland national campus in County Cork and to include the project as a strategic priority within Ireland’s future national sporting infrastructure programme.”