Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)

One of the commitments in the programme for Government is to invest in sporting infrastructure. I was delighted to see the successful European Championship athletes visit the Taoiseach recently. It was important that he spent time with them. Ireland had an incredible European Championships. Ciara Mageean won a gold medal, as did the mixed 4 x 400 m relay athletes, and Rhasidat Adeleke won a superb silver medal. I congratulate Rhasidat on an incredible achievement. If she is listening, I want to assure her that 99.9% of the people of Ireland are proud of her. We are absolutely delighted with her performance and I say to her to ignore the bigotry and racism. The women's 4 x 400 m athletes also won a silver medal. This placed us on the medals table ahead of the likes of Germany and Ukraine, which are athletic superpowers. We did all this despite the fact that we are not investing in our athletics infrastructure. My point is that we need to invest in athletics infrastructure. For example, in Cork, 8,600 athletes do not have an athletics track to train on. This is despite the fact that the likes of Phil Healy, the "Ballineen Bullet", who was part of that 4 x 400 m women's silver medal winning team, is a member of Bandon Athletics Club, as is Nicola Tuthill who finished ninth in the hammer throwing event. Bandon Athletics Club is in the process of building an athletics track. This could be a game changer for athletics in Cork. I ask the Taoiseach to support this facility and investment in it. The club has submitted a sports capital grant application. It needs to be successful in this regard, but it also needs other sources of funding to complete this vitally important project.

See this speech in context