Sports Funding Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-06 ============================================================ Laura Harmon (LAB), Industrial and Commercial Panel I welcome the Aire Stáit. I firmly believe that sport does and can unite us all. It is so important that we promote inclusion in sport at all levels and for all types of sports, be it for women, disabled people, members of the Traveller community, those of different ethnicities and members of the LGBTQ+ community, of which I am one. It was great to join Na Laochra Aeracha in Cork in my late 30s recently and to go back to playing GAA after 20 years. It is an important club. Unfortunately, many clubs face barriers in terms of funding, regulations and the boundaries that the GAA might set for where people need to be living. We need to look at these issues and have a consistent across the board. I am also a member of Frontrunners in Cork, which is an international group for LGBT runners. There is also one in Dublin. These groups provide such an important space, not just for sport, health and well-being but also in terms of mental health, being able to make friends and build a community outside of other spaces, and certainly outside places that involve alcohol. It is really important that we encourage inclusion across the board. It could be absolutely transformative for our country and could really foster confidence in people who may have given up sport at a younger age and were able to come back to it again. Age should not be a barrier when we talk about inclusion in sport. I really welcome this debate. It is good to have a debate in which the Government and the Opposition are in agreement, because I really feel this is something that should unite everybody. --- 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/seanad/2026-05-06/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:54+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-06