Minister wants facilities shared

Minister of State for Tourism and Sport, Michael Ring, has signalled a potentially significant change to the Irish sporting landscape by warning that clubs seeking government capital funding will in future have to agree to share their facilities.

“In future there will be one astropitch per town, one facility per town,” said Ring at the launch of Swim Ireland’s ‘Swim Healthy‘ initiative. “Clubs will have to share facilities, we will have to stop all the nonsense.”

No individual organisations were mentioned but such a policy would have very practical consequences for the GAA, which has always refused to allow other sports make use of grounds and other facilities owned by units in the association.