{"id":190193,"date":"2025-11-20T05:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T05:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/190193\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T05:22:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T05:22:11","slug":"taoiseach-criticises-dublin-local-authorities-over-lack-of-sporting-facilities-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/190193\/","title":{"rendered":"Taoiseach criticises Dublin local authorities over lack of sporting facilities \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> has criticised local authorities in Dublin<\/a> for a lack of \u201cengagement\u201d in the provision of sporting facilities and said other councils are much better at this.<\/p>\n

Mr Martin was commenting after Social Democrats<\/a> TD Gary Gannon<\/a> highlighted the lack of facilities in Dublin\u2019s north inner-city in the wake of the success of the Republic of Ireland soccer team last week and its striker Troy Parrott<\/a>, who is from the area.<\/p>\n

Mr Gannon said he \u201ccaptured the nation\u2019s heart, scoring two against Portugal and three against Hungary\u201d in World Cup qualifier matches.<\/p>\n

The Dublin Central TD pointed to the lack of facilities in the north inner-city despite the number of high-class athletes from the area and that children have to travel to other areas to play sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no football pitches, astro turfs, in the north-inner city. When it was Kelly Harrington, there were no boxing facilities that were well-funded by the State.\u201d <\/p>\n

He acknowledged that the north inner-city taskforce, which is overseen by the Taoiseach\u2019s office, is well-funded.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we still have the same lack of facilities. We have these sporting heroes who have to travel outside their own communities. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are very few places in the country where people have to travel outside their own communities when they\u2019re starting off in a sport\u201d where they achieve such acclaim, he said as he called on the Taoiseach to take action.<\/p>\n

Mr Martin said the Government salutes \u201cthe extraordinary performances of Troy Parrott, Kelly Harrington, indeed many athletes. A person on radio the other day listed all the internationals in one street alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he acknowledged \u201cthere is an issue in Dublin and I think the local authorities need to be engaged in terms of the provision of sporting facilities. Around the country other local authorities do it better.\u201d <\/p>\n

However, he stressed that the sports capital grant \u201chas funded lots of facilities\u201d. <\/p>\n

On boxing he said \u201cthere\u2019s no want of political will to support boxing and boxing clubs\u201d.<\/p>\n

He had asked successive ministers for sport and one of the issues in boxing is \u201cadministrative capacity to get the applications in and get it done\u201d and \u201ca bit of work\u201d is needed on that. <\/p>\n

There were \u201cvery high-level elite sporting supports and grants\u201d for those who get on to the Irish team, Mr Martin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re trying to improve them for those who graduate to development teams or development squads.\u201d<\/p>\n

They are developing a league academy where \u20ac3 million was provided \u201cto home grow a competitive League of Ireland and to have a pipeline of young talent that can develop in Ireland,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin has criticised local authorities in Dublin for a lack of \u201cengagement\u201d in the provision of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[52,18,89770,19,17,5765,18578,132,29833],"class_list":{"0":"post-190193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-dublin","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-gary-gannon","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-micheal-martin","14":"tag-social-democrats","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-troy-parrott"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115580354164761287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}