David Courell
speaker
622 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2026
last heard 21 May
David Courell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
What do you mean by that?
So...
Government traditionally invests through two vehicles.
So you have what was originally called the Sports Capital and Equipment Programme, which is primarily for grassroots clubs.
That's now been retitled as Community Sports Facilities Fund.
And then the Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund, which will be for larger scale programmes like League of Ireland clubs, etc.
But if you look at grassroots facilities, for example, we and I'm not here to kind of point fingers at anybody else.
But it is a fact that if you contrast us to, say, one of the other bigger field sports in the country, I think there was about a 240 percent higher level of investment into that code of sport.
beyond football over a 20 year period.
So the data was very clear.
We were not getting our fair share.
And when we started to look at it, it was a few combining factors.
One, I don't think we, the association, had maybe supported the clubs in the manner that we could have to help guide them through the processes.
Two, the barriers of entry that I talked about were for those funding streams.
For example, we were talking off air just a moment ago about your own club.
If you don't have a 15-year lease or ownership of the land, then you are capped at a certain volume of investment.
And that is a real, real issue for football, unlike other sports where ownership of facilities is quite prominent and prevalent.
So we have been working with local authorities to try and promote expanded lease tenures so that we can ensure our clubs can gain access to the full breadth of what they can afford.
So I think the direction of travel is now moving more towards municipal facilities.
I think the reality is... You see some amazing ones around Dublin.
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