Gavin Cooney

NEW SPORTS MINISTER Thomas Byrne has defended the government’s investment in Irish football. 

Outgoing FAI Chairman Roy Barrett last week said the sport had suffered from “chronic underinvestment” since 2000, producing figures showing that the FAI received less than €100,000 per club in that time, compared to the GAA’s €208,000 per club and rugby’s €280,000 per club. Barrett said football facilities in Ireland are “grossly inadequate” for both the present and the future, with the forecast increase in immigration to greatly increase the need for facilities across the country. 

But speaking to reporters at the SSE Airtricity/Soccer Writers Ireland annual awards night, new minister Byrne – who replaced Jack Chambers as the Minister of State for Sport – defended the government’s record on investing in football, citing the 2020 State bailout of the organisation. 

“I’m going to look at that and take his comments very, very seriously”, said the minister. “His calculations, I’m not going to argue with, but they do go back to 2000 and in the last number of years there has been huge support for football. The FAI got significant support in their darkest days from the government when we could have just said ‘No, we can’t fund this, that is it.’ We funded it because of thee grassroots right around the country. We’re going to look at figures in more recent years in more detail, I think the FAI have got better in terms of educating clubs in terms of how to apply for funding because a lot of depends on whether a club applies itself, the GAA were excellent at this 15 years ago.” 

That said, Byrne admitted that the country needs more facilities, and said he hoped the government would “step up to the plate” on the matter. 

“Where I come from in east Meath, an increasing burgeoning  population, we need more and more facilities, more pitches for clubs. I can think of Stamullen FC straight away in my own area who don’t have a permanent facility but yet have hundreds of players and a really successful ladies and girls set up there.

“That’s what I see and we want to help the FAI clubs get organised to make sure they can benefit as much as possible from the sports capital grant. But we also want to see, and it’s a passion of mine, now that I’m between the two education and sports, I really want to see how we can open up school facilities  more to outside groups. 

“When we see the changing Ireland as well, a lot of people have moved to Ireland, and football is a global sport that is more and more popular. I think we’re going to just have to step up to the plate.” 

Byrne repeatedly stressed the financing power of the Sports Capital Grant programme, but Barrett has called for another income stream to be opened up through the national betting tax. As it stands, everyone who places a sports bet in Ireland pays a tax of 2%, the returns of which are ringfenced for the horseracing and greyhound industries, regardless of the sport on which the bet has been placed. Barrett said the tax has thus far yielded €1.5 billion for those two sports, and called for the government to raise it to 3% and allow other sports, including football, benefit. 

Byrne, however, shirked a question asking whether the government would raise the tax. 

“That’s a matter for the Minister for Finance, so it doesn’t come under the Sports department at all”, he replied. 

“I saw what [Roy Barrett] said, I don’t want to give any commitment on it. We’ve gone through a whole load of gambling regulations in the last few months so I’m not certain I want to go there yet.

“This is a question really for the Minister for Finance because it’s a tax. This was set up 20 years ago and more, clearly times have changed but it is set up into legislation, it’s not the easiest thing to change and it is a fact that the horse racing industry employs up to 30,000 people around the country, so there’s a huge amount of employment around that.

“I’m not here to defend any particular industry but in that case the prize money certainly goes back into the system in terms of employing people and all of that. Look, he’s not making a point that one could straight away disagree with, but in reality it’s a matter for the Minister for Finance.”