Tax Reliefs
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-10
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Malcolm Byrne (FF), Wicklow-Wexford

I acknowledge and am very enthusiastic about the enormous investment that we have made in sport, but this is really about measures to increase strength, resistance training and flexibility. We know that about 250,000 people have osteoporosis in Ireland - approximately 20% of women and 6.2% of men aged over 50. Annually, we see in the order of 32,000 fragility fractures, basically because of lack of strength. The estimated cost of that to our health service is €464 million annually, not to mention the pain to the individuals concerned. Given our ageing population and the challenges here, this could rise to a €1 billion within the next decade.
We need to have sufficient resistance and strength training among all of our population. There is a very clear commitment in the programme for Government to develop that. We need to look at examples in other countries like Canada and Singapore that have done this. We need to be able to build up that strength and resistance training because in the long term it is a saving on our health budget.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-10