Sports Facilities Dail Éireann — 2026-05-07 ============================================================ Charlie McConalogue (FF), Donegal The key thing is that we have to make the biggest impact we can with what is available, and also look to grow what is available too. There are opportunities in many communities where there could be land available through schools and local authorities to collaborate with clubs. That is a message that we are getting out as strongly as we can with regard to this new round to encourage that collaboration, but there are also challenges regarding availability of land and it not being available. We are engaging across Departments about that to see how we can do more. Tools are available to local authorities, like I described, to be able to identify lands and to help to make them available, but we certainly need to make that more of a priority and for it to become more standard practice in how we step out and plan for new communities and make sure that their sporting and recreational needs are fully catered for. --- 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/2026-05-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-07