New National Sports Policy Launched By Ministers

A new National Sports Policy has been launched by the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Shane Ross, and the Minister with responsibility for Tourism and Sport, Brendan Griffin, at the St Laurence O'Toole Recreation Centre, Sherriff Street, in Dublin's North Inner City.

The National Sports Policy 2018–2027 has been developed through an extensive public consultation process and collaboration with the sports sector and other stakeholders. The High-Level Goals of the National Sports Policy are: Increased Participation; More Excellence; Improved Capacity.

Key targets of the National Sports Policy 2018–2027 include:

• Overall participation in sport to rise from 43% to 50% of the population by 2027 (the equivalent of an extra 260,0000 people participating in sport)

• More targeted high performance funding to deliver more Olympic/Paralympic medals (From the securing of 13 medals in 2016 to a target of 20 in 2028)

• All funded sports bodies adopting the Governance Code for the Community, Voluntary and Charity (CVC) Sector.

Launching the National Sports Policy 2018-2027, Ministers Ross and Griffin reaffirmed the Government's intention to doubling funding for sport, from €112million in 2018 to €220million in 2027. The Government will also seek to deliver greater certainty in funding year-on-year, particularly in respect of Sport Ireland high performance funding.

The Ministers expressed their intention to begin implementing the National Sports Policy 2018–2027 without delay. Recalling the commitments for future funding of Sports Capital Programmes announced earlier this year in the National Development Plan, they indicated their intention to also seek additional funding for Sport Ireland programmes in the 2019 Estimates, to support, amongst other measures:

• doubling of funding for the Women in Sport programme to €2million

• creation of a dedicated €1m programme for Disability Sport through the deployment of a Sport Inclusion Disability Officer in all 26 LSPs countrywide

• €1.5m allocation to high performance programmes in support of Tokyo 2020 preparations

Minister Ross said: "The publication of this policy is an important milestone for the Irish sporting community and sets out a Vision for Irish Sport in 2027, along with 57 actions to transform our sporting landscape over the next decade. Increasing participation is the cornerstone of this policy. We want to see every citizen engaging regularly in some form of sport and physical activity, irrespective of their background or their physical capabilities.

"Together with the stakeholders across all levels of sport in this country, we will relentlessly pursue the aims of this policy to elevate Ireland to the top of the table globally for both participation in sport and high performance over the next decade."

Outlining the ambitions of the Government's National Sports Policy 2018–2027 to significantly improve the sporting landscape in this country, Minister Griffin added: "The benefits of sport and physical activity to our population are clear and sport is a valuable asset to communities across the country. The availability of quality sports facilities is key to raising standards and Government investment in recent years at the National Sports Campus and throughout the country is proof of our commitment to sustaining this investment to our sporting infrastructure. The National Sports Policy 2018-2027 also sees continued support of our high performance athletes to keep on inspiring the generations that follow after them in their particular sport. I would hope to see a significant increase in our high performance investment over the next decade, to some €30 million annually."

(MH/LM)