Barra Roantree

There's just kind of three really in that area.

They don't have the capacity, I suppose, for the number of kids.

But then you also get, I suppose, and this is kind of where the disadvantage, I suppose, comes in, that these schools are often dealing with very challenging issues and circumstances around.

And again, Ciarán, I suppose, will know and be able to say a lot more about that.

But it feeds through to outcomes as well.

So we see that, actually, if you take...

Dublin 8 area most of the South West inner city but it's where they publish stats from we see that it's only about 36% of students who do the Leaving Cert in schools in the area go on to higher education which is tiny it's half the average for the country as a whole about 80% Dublin's 81% so it's one of the really lowest areas that you see those progression rates and so those poor outcomes

There really isn't.

And again, it's the case very much in the inner city, but particularly in the south-west inner city, that there's only actually, if you take the administrative area, there's only two pitches in the entire area and they're actually over in kind of a corner of the area that's cut off by the big bypass road, the Conn Colbert or the Chapel Isle bypass road that people, again, will know if they're going to drive into the city.

And so the only two pitches in the whole area are over there in a corner that cut off by the road.

Very difficult for anyone to access.

And so if you compare it to the population, you've got essentially 20,000, over 20,000 people for every pitch compared to the average in Dublin City, which is 2,000.

So far, far fewer pitches, almost no pitches.

And again, that feeds through.

And so we did a survey with the help of the schools in the area of the kids and asked them, you know, their levels of difficulty.

physical and sporting participation.

And what really came out strongly in that was that actually these kids are participating in sport in schools at the same rate as kids nationwide from a national study that was done.

But in the community, they're doing much, much lower levels.

There's much more kids who never participate in sport.

And again, if you ask them why, they say it's straightforward.