Racing investment - Communities continue to be funds loser

PUNTERS will applaud yesterday’s announcement by Sports Minister John O’Donoghue that the Government is investing €200 million in the country’s racecourses.

From the Curragh to Clonmel, from Leopardstown to Listowel, the Capital Development Fund will create jobs and improve facilities for thousands of racegoers.

However, the move also brings into sharp focus the Coalition’s abject failure to invest in desperately needed community facilities up and down the country.

We refer to basic facilities of the kind found in cities and towns across Europe. Facilities such as athletics tracks or swimming pools where Ireland’s growing number of obese children could play and engage in action sports.

Or the kind of facilities where disabled children and their minders could escape the confinement that disability brings in Ireland.

It would be churlish to begrudge investment in racecourses but the Government’s €200m handout has put the spotlight on its neglect of communities where far greater generosity is warranted.