Greater participation in sport is the key reason behind the Government’s decision to double their investment into the newly released National Sports Policy, according to John Greene.
Funding has increased from €111 million to €220m in an attempt to have 50% of the population participating in physical activity and sport – an extra 250,000 people.
Investment into high-performance sport will amount to €30m over the next decade.
But Greene believes the Goverment have chosen greater participation as their goal ultimate goal as they bid to address the country’s obesity crisis.
“This is the great split in sport all over the world on whether you focus on participation or high performance,” Greene told OTB.
“I would always lean in favour of participation because without increasing participation – everything else fails.
“And I do think this document has come down on the side of participation. And that is the way we have been going over the last number of years if you’ve been listening to successful sports ministers and the ministers of state.
“The noises coming from Leo Varadkar, Michael Ring and Paschal Donoghue – all the language was about participation. I do think that’s where this [document] has primarily looked at.
“But the thing people from the high-performance end of things have been screaming for is multi-annual funding. And that would mean funding for the full cycle of the Olympics and not just announcing funding packages every 12 months.”
The application process for the much-maligned Sports Capital Programme has been altered to ‘ensure the programme is achieving objectives in line with National Sports Policy’.
And Greene acknowledged there is still plenty of work to do for the Government to rid the notion of the programme being affected by ‘politics’.
“It’s not in here but in the wake of the Wesley thing there was a very detailed review of the Sports Capital Programme which is for only of the bravest of souls to wade their way through,”
“But in essence there was an acknowledgement that there were flaws in the system about how they were weighting certain projects.
“We still can’t get away from the fact – and I know they don’t like to hear it – that there’s an element of politics involved in the Sports Capital Programme.
“It’s lessening each time and there’s a big difference between now and 10 years ago. But there’s still an element of politics involved.”
James Hopper
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