Sports Funding
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-20
============================================================

Joanna Byrne (SF), Louth

I am delighted for all the successful applicants and I know the funding will be put to good use. All of these grants are vital to our counties and local communities' sporting infrastructure. Many of our sporting bodies, from national governing bodies to local clubs, have put out reports and press statements on the need for new infrastructure and the upgrading of existing facilities. These funding streams are crucial to that. In the last round of the large-scale sport infrastructure fund, there were 96 applications, with just 35 being successful. We need a new focus on sport in this country and additional funding to be allocated. I am going to keep repeating that.
Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael made commitments in their manifestos to increase the betting tax from 2% to 3% and to use this funding to invest in sport, but this has not been done yet. That increase of 1% in the levy would have raised an additional €50 million in desperately needed funding for Irish sport.
To harness and evolve various sports, the simple fact is we need more funding, but we also need application processes that are user friendly. The information and consultation evenings are welcome. I look forward to seeing more of them being rolled out.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20