Sports Council set to launch new research programme
The council's three-year strategic plan Sport for Life was launched in Croke Park yesterday by Minister John O'Donoghue, who described it as an exciting follow-up to the ISC's first strategy statement A New Era for Irish Sport. That had introduced a new funding dimension to sport and the Local Sports Partnerships which were set up as a result.
Central to the success of this new strategic plan will be a 300,000 research project by the ESRI which will also influence long-term planning.
Brendan Whelan, director of the ESRI, said that the research will assess the economic value of sport, the importance of sport tourism and how social standing determines participation in sport.
"People feel sport is very important from a health point of view so what we will be looking are what are the factors that lead some people to participate in sport and some people not to and how can they encourage more people to participate," he said.
"And there is the whole issue of
organisation. Who are the people volunteering? How solid are the referee and linesmen structures and how can they be encouraged.
"We will be trying to relate all those dimensions of sport to the general economic and social considerations and look at the quality of life in Ireland and what role sport has to play.
"We will be trying to give the Irish Sports Council the base line data so that they will know what the situation is now that they are starting off. "It is very important that we know clearly what participation is like, what current values are and what is going on in sport in a fairly scientific way and then to be able to judge how that is changed after three years or five years as a result of particular policies."
"There is very limited data and insight available on sport in Ireland at the moment and this makes policymaking and decision taking difficult," ISC chief executive John Treacy said.
"Our sporting capacity is not as developed as our neighbours or our international competitors but with strategic capacity we will achieve our aims and fulfil our potential," he said.
He said that their previous strategy programme was very successful and the reaction very encouraging, getting a strong endorsement from national governing bodies and local sports partnerships in particular.
"We have 12 partnerships up and running, involving NGBs, sports clubs, schools and local communities.
"The code of ethics is in place and we are very happy that 50 NGBs now have children's officers in place," he added.
"At the launch of that particular three-year strategy there was a lot of apprehension with the anti-doping plan as well but now everything is in place and we have signed up to the Council of Europe's anti-doping charter. When we set out we had a budget of £9.5m and now it is 28m," he said.
Mr Treacy added they had targeted five sports in their high performance strategy in the lead up to the Athens Olympics and that these projects were all on target. Three more sports were being added the to the list for 2008.
"What I am saying is nobody should be excluded for any reason and that is why we will now be treating competitive sport and recreational sport equally," he added.
"As a priority we will be targeting young people in primary schools because if they do not get involved in sport at a young age it is very likely they will never get involved. We will also be offering our support to the Department of Education.
"Investment in this particular area is vital and we will be taking a long-term look at schools."
He said they wanted to influence the critical need for physical education
in Ireland so that future generations understood the importance of physical activity and had the basic skills to participate.
Other objectives were to increase opportunities to participate in sport, particularly for school-aged children; to build capacity in the sporting
organisations so that they can provide access and facilitate performance; to build relationships with other organisations and to consolidate and improve on the initiatives already launched.
The council is happy with the preparations for Athens next year adding that the relationships between the Olympic Council of Ireland and the Athletic Association of Ireland had improved greatly.
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