I welcome these statements. Football can be a cornerstone of our lives and memories. It can bring the goodwill to bring communities together. I think back as far as Italia 90 and the heartbreak caused by the likes of Schillaci and so on, and what they did to bring a nation to a stop and then break our hearts. More recently, in Prague, we thought we were on the cusp of achieving World Cup qualification. Some 1.6 million viewers tuned in for that game. That just shows how much interest there is in our national team. Our ladies have been doing us very proud. They won last night and I wish them the best of luck at the weekend. Acording to the FAI figures for the numbers of players and volunteers, there are 250,000 players and 80,000 volunteers, yet only 34% of females have access to a toilet and 10% have access to indoor facilities. In my area, midlands soccer looked to come together to have a centre of excellence for schoolboys and schoolgirls to be able to play on multiple pitches but did not get planning permission. They are back to square one. They are already on the meter and are spending money that could have been put into lights, Astroturf or whatever the case may be. Instead, the money is going into bureaucracy. That should not be the case. We need to figure out how to work with such organisations to ensure their money is going directly to the sport rather than the bureaucracy along the journey. That is a matter we will have to address. We also need to look at multi-use facilities. I know this is something that the Government is referencing in the context of sports capital funding and that it is considering how we can bring multiple sporting codes together. That would be very much welcomed. There is also an added layer in respect of community facilities. In my constituency, Moneygall has a state-of-the-art playing pitch and has applied to the Department of Community and Rural Development for funding to develop a community facility that could also be a changing room. We have to look at multiple layers of joined-up thinking at government level so there is not just a reliance on sports capital grants and we do not put on the blinkers and go down a tunnel. Let us try to expand it and see can we look across all aspects of government to bring funding together so that we can maximise that impact and make sure it has a real significance across all sporting codes. I look at the facilities and see the impact. I then look at larger, high-appeal matches and see the prices for which tickets are going. We have done nothing to address ticket touting. Where there is crime and where we see communities that have been affected by crime, we are taking the funds of criminals identified by the Criminal Asset Bureau and putting them into those communities that need them the most. We should do something similar in respect of ticket touting. We should go after touts by applying additional resources and ensuring that where they are identified, any funds are used to improve local facilities. That would be a productive service in supporting the likes of football. Where we are at in relation to facilities is that we have made an awful lot of progress but certainly need to do a lot more. I would welcome an announcement of sports capital funding. I look forward to working with groups right across my constituency to ensure we can maximise delivery for us on the ground.

Sentiment score: 0.19