Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister for coming in. Women's football is booming and has huge potential. The difficulty is the number of leagues for young girls to play in. These leagues are creating barriers for participation in football by young women. We cannot allow legacy issues around leagues and policies to deny girls opportunities to play sport and football. Sport for girls and everybody else is important, not just for physical but also for mental health. It is important to acknowledge that on mental health day. Sport and football are an important avenue for positive development for families and communities because stronger communities make stronger societies. Legacy issues should not impede girls from playing in football.

Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)
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It is important that the Football Association of Ireland, FAI, finds a solution to this. As Deputy Andrews said, 400 girls across Dublin and Meath have been left high and dry following the collapse of the Metropolitan Girls League. In my area, three clubs, St. Columbans SYC, Darndale FC and Artane Beaumont FC, have been directly impacted and dragged into this. At the end of the day, it is our young girls who are suffering. They all want to be able to play football in a league that is competitive. The social aspect of these girls being involved in these clubs is equally important. The coaches, the volunteers and the young girls in the clubs need answers. I acknowledge that the Minister said last week that funding may be withheld. Has the FAI responded? Is it working on a solution?

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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In my area Tyrrelstown FC has been trying to resolve this issue for a number of weeks. Up to 50 girls are affected by this debacle. They have been offered the opportunity to play in the north Louth league. However, with a cost-of-living crisis how will teams travel up to Louth from Tyrrelstown every week? I heard today there is a possibility of the issue being resolved in January with a league being opened up. Does the Minister of State have any information on that? This goes to a fundamental issue, namely, that there is an explosion in the number of girls getting involved in sport. This is brilliant news because, whether it is soccer, GAA or cricket, all the sports across the board involve a huge number of young people. We need to make sure they are kept involved.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Minister of State for being here in person to take this Topical Issue. He is familiar with the teams in our area as we share a constituency, which include Balrath Girls and Boys Football Club, East Meath United and Laytown United. Balrath Girls and Boys Football Club alone has around 120 players affected by this issue. When I speak to coaches, they all talk about keeping the girls involved. Many of them are going through a lot in their own lives but there is such a benefit of team sport and giving them consistent quality football. I am interested in what leverage the Minister of State has to influence this. It feels like a bureaucratic, "computer says no" decision. There needs to be a resolution.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the opportunity to talk about this matter because as the Deputies acknowledged, it is an issue with which I am familiar and about which I have spoken out strongly in public. I fully appreciate the frustrations of children - we are talking about children - their parents, coaches and neighbours. I knocked on doors in some of these areas - there is an election some way away - and neighbours are talking about this issue. It is not confined to individual teams. It is a big issue in east Meath and north and west Dublin. The people involved in this issue need to know it is breaking through to the general public. From the outset of my appointment as Minister of State with responsibility for sport, women's and girls' participation in sport has been a priority for me. No child who wants to play a sport should be denied the opportunity to participate.

I met the FAI this week on this issue. It offered to brief me after I spoke out about the issue and called on it to proffer a solution. I recognise that governing bodies are independent. It is not right that on every single issue politicians should be jumping in on sports bodies. Ultimately, the FAI, not the Government, is responsible for its own sport, including matters relating to the leagues. I welcomed the opportunity to hear directly from the FAI on the issue at our meeting. I conveyed the serious concerns expressed to me by children, parents, coaches and members of the community. The staff in the FAI have been working with the different stakeholders to try to come to a solution, find a pathway for clubs that have fallen out of this league through no fault of their own and get them affiliated with particular leagues. Some of the teams have found another league. It is not a position any team should be in in underage sport that it should have to find a league. The pathway should be there. Some have done it through their own efforts. I was not aware, for example, that Tyrrelstown is joining the Louth league. I know some in east Meath, which is slightly more logical, although not ideal, have found that path themselves. I encourage the FAI to continue its work to make sure this issue is solved and give people the opportunity to progress into the league, which in this case in the DDSL which has operated in Dublin, east Meath and all of the areas affected for many years.

Two weeks ago, football was a big winner in the round of the community sports facilities fund with more than €45 million going to projects involving football alone. There were other projects that also involved football as well on top of that. We have given priority to projects that increase female participation. It is the case that clubs must comply with the Equal Status Act. There is also a new condition called the similar access policy which ensures there is no public funding for any capital facility unless men and women have similar access. The soon-to-be-announced large-scale fund will have similar requirements. Last year, as a top up to its normal funding we gave the FAI €500,000 to support women's and girls' football. This was given through Sport Ireland and has been invested in coaching, grassroots and female leadership.

On Deputy Mitchell's specific query in relation to funding, the FAI is currently in negotiations with the Government in respect of a renewed memorandum of understanding. The last memorandum of understanding concentrated mainly on governance issues. I must say that the FAI has gone from zero to almost 100 on governance issues. It has done a good job. I have no doubt but that improvement on the football side will follow from those transformations on the governance side. If we agree a future memorandum of understanding, we will require a review of the leagues and the various affiliates under the FAI to ensure it delivers stable and geographically logical leagues for girls and boys. The challenge is that these leagues have grown up almost separately over a long time involving a lot of volunteers. We must acknowledge that they are mostly run by volunteers. In the modern age, they do not offer, as we can see, a logical provision of football for children in particular and for adults - children are more of a priority. That will be a requirement for the memorandum of understanding. It makes sense for everybody and will make sense for football. I will continue to engage with the FAI to make sure this is resolved, in particular, on the commitment that this should be fully resolved early next year, which I think we have all been told by the FAI.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Now, I call the Deputies in the same order, with 30 seconds each.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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Deputy Donnelly and I will take a minute each. I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I welcome the commitment regarding the memorandum of understanding. Those girls, their coaches, parents and communities are looking for a timeline in respect of what will happen now and how soon all of this can happen. I played in the DDSL 25 years ago. It is a huge league; there are tens of thousands of kids. We are talking about 400 in this case. Surely, there is a way to get this resolved as soon as possible. It is really needed. It is about providing football for girls, which has such a benefit for them in terms of development. It has to happen.

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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As part of his answer, the Minister of State said more than half the clubs affected now have a resolution, which means the other half does not. It is a disappointing answer. I find it strange that the adults around table are not looking at solutions to ensure that children can play the sport they want to play. Those adults volunteer their time; it is not a criticism because I have been involved in sport and know the time it takes. The volunteerism is phenomenal. We are renowned for volunteerism. However, when you take on a role, you also take on a responsibility. The responsibility of those adults is to ensure that the other half of those children who have not got a league to play in at the moment have a league as soon as possible. We need to revisit this issue if it is not resolved by January. Heads need to be knocked to make sure every single child has a league to play in.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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We are out of time; the other Deputies, briefly, please.

Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein)
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It is important that these leagues have women at the top of their structures because it seems the common denominator is that men run these leagues and they do not facilitate or support women and young girls playing football. There has to be some mechanism to allow women to take positions at the top of the particular leagues.

Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome everything the Minister of State said about the funding. I echo what my colleagues said. We are all on the same page. We need to get these girls back playing football. We need to work together in whatever way we can to make sure we deliver this by January at the latest.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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I think it is recognised that the Minister of State has been a great champion for women in sport of all types.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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My other half plays for the adult team of one of the clubs mentioned.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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You have no choice.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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We are in the run-up to an election. I hope the FAI, DDSL and the SFAI are listening. One issue has brought the Opposition and the Government together, speaking with one voice, which is girls' access to the DDSL. I hope the message goes out loud and clear that Dáil Éireann was united today and that every girl deserves a chance to participate. People in committees should not decide that some girls' team cannot go into the league to which other clubs in the area belong. I met the FAI representatives. I will praise it where praise is due and I praise the staff of the FAI, who work within very old structures. I agree with what was said about the leagues.

Volunteers run the leagues but accommodation needs to be made for the small number of teams left out. Some would say, on one side of the argument, it is their own fault because they were too late, but the reality is these are volunteer clubs and are not expected to know they have to apply to a league when their former league collapses. Let us have common sense and get the word out that the Opposition and Government have come together on this. It is too important an issue. Some journalists have dismissed this as a local constituency issue but it is much wider, as seen in the constituencies represented here today. It cannot be allowed to happen and will not be allowed to happen in future.

On leadership in affiliates to sporting organisations, we insisted there would be a minimum of 40% women on the board of every sporting body. Some of the largest sporting organisations were last to the table on that but all have come to the table. All of them have that. One of the things not achieved under the previous memorandum of understanding was that they were supposed to get a minimum number of women on committees below the top. I think having 40% of women on the main board will lead to that happening anyway but I can confirm it is something the Government will request in renewing the MOU. We all support football in this House and support the work done to increase participation. We all work with football clubs around the country to make sure they maximise their grants under the community sports facilities fund. We welcome that and want that but this has to be resolved. I thank the Deputies for raising it.