Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-26
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Gary Gannon (SD), Dublin Central

The heart of this issue for me is not about the success. Very few children will ever reach the scale of Troy Parrott or Kellie Harrington. All too often I have to take a phone call from a coach who is dealing with kids who are oftentimes coming from overcrowded and disadvantaged backgrounds, to tell me that their pitch booking has been cancelled or they do not have playing facilities.
The inability to play on a pitch has an impact on their ability to be inspired tonight by somebody like Troy Parrott and take up a ball and head out on a Saturday morning. There is a disparity in simply being able to access sport. That impacts in a way that will not only be felt in medals, trophies, buses or jerseys but in the way that kids will not have access to a role model, to be just able to go out and release the energy kids get to do in sport. This is not just about medals or world cups. It is actually about giving the capacity to young people in disadvantaged communities to play at a scale experienced by other kids in more affluent areas. That is why the sports capital programme needs to involve direct State investment into infrastructure. Anything else is a failure of the same people we will be celebrating tonight and those who will come after them.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:47+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-26