Sport gets short shrift

SO after all that, that’s it? You might remember a couple months ago on these pages we took a look at the various party manifestos as they related to sport. At the time, we have to say, we were broadly encouraged by what we saw.

There were a lot of innovative policy proposals. Ranging from support for All Ireland leagues, to fan ownership of clubs (or at least representation on their boards), to levies being placed on gambling company profits to facilitate investment in community-based sports organisations.

Naturally enough there was also a lot of woolly, ill-defined, aspirational sounding nonsense too – this is politics we’re talking about after all. Even so – and call us naive here – given the relatively encouraging nature of those manifestos, we expected more from the Programme for Government (PFG) agreed by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party this week.

Where have all the well-thought out policies of January gone? Why is it that pretty much all we’re left with is the woolly aspirational jargon? You might say fair enough, sport is pretty a pretty low priority at a time like this, when there are more pressing things to consider.

We are, after all, in the midst of a global pandemic. As a country we face frankly frightening economic and fiscal challenges. Climate change remains the single biggest issue of our time (if you thought Covid-19 was fun, wait until the permafrost melts and god knows what kind of viruses are unleashed upon us).

Still we should expect our government to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. They ought to be capable of tackling more than one issue at any given moment. That’s why we have ministers and ministries.

How can it be with three political parties working together, it wasn’t possible to come up with something better than this? It’s not like they haven’t had time.

The general election was held on February 8, that’s 130 days ago as of today (Wednesday).

In that time they should have been capable of not only blending their own policy proposals on sport, but also of robbing the best bits from other parties’ plans (Labour had some good ideas in their manifesto, for instance).

Of course, there are still some good things contained in the PFG. The further development of Greenways and cycling is to be encouraged (there are Green fingers all over that, pardon the pun). Moves to impose more stringent welfare standards on the greyhound industry likewise.

It’s really positive that the insurance crisis, particularly as it relates to public liability insurance – which is crippling a lot of clubs and sports facilities – will be tackled in some form (talk of a constitutional amendment shows how serious the issue is being taken).

It’s nice that the government will aim to get participation rates up to 60% of the population. It’s nice that the government will seek to boost female participation... quite how they’ll get there, though, is hard to see from the document. The same goes for its aims on high performance. The policy outlined for high performance in the PFG is basically to have policy (“publish a High Performance strategy”).

The PFG says it will increase funding for high performance sports, but not by how much or how they intend to pay for it. The gambling industry is probably relieved that no further levvies on its profits have been proposed. The decision to establish a gambling regulator, meanwhile, is a step in the right direction, but even then there could have been more meat on the bones. An international model upon which to base it on could have been provided.

The disappointing thing is that there’s no real vision for sport in this document. It shouldn’t be asking much of anybody seeking to govern a sport mad country to have some greater vision for sport than the steady as she goes approach of

the PFG.