The Taoiseach's office oversees the north inner-city task force in Dublin. I imagine this week he was as proud as anyone else in the country when a young man from the north inner city captured the nation's heart by scoring two goals against Portugal and three against Hungary, namely, Troy Parrott. Whenever we have these heroes from the north inner city – I assure the Taoiseach we have many of them - inevitably, the conversation turns to the lack of facilities. Once again, when we talk about soccer, there are no football or AstroTurf pitches in the north inner city. When it was Kellie Harrington, there were no boxing facilities that were well funded by the State. The north inner-city task force has been well funded - I admit that - but we still have the same lack of facilities, meaning these sporting heroes have to travel outside of their own communities. There are very few places in the country where people have to travel outside of their own communities when they are starting off in the sport for which they will reach such acclaim. The Taoiseach should address that from his office.

First, the north-east inner-city task force has been very effective and impactful. We salute the extraordinary performances of Troy Parrott, Kellie Harrington and many others. A person on the radio the other day listed all the internationals in one street alone, as well as the local football clubs and so forth. In fairness to the sports capital grant, it has funded a lot of facilities. When I was Minister for education, we built Larkin Community College, which has been an impactful resource to the locality and so forth.

That is what you are supposed to do.

I have asked successive Ministers for sport about this. Some issues in the boxing area relate to the administrative capacity to get the applications in and get them done. There is no want of political will to support boxing and boxing clubs. There is a bit of work in that regard. I just spoke to the Minister for sport last evening about the next capital grant. For those people who get to the Irish team or whatever, we have a high level of elite sporting supports and grants. We are trying to improve them for those who graduate and are in development squads or development teams. We are developing the league academy in the League of Ireland. A total of €3 million was provided to try to home-grow a competitive League of Ireland and have a pipeline of young talent who can develop in Ireland. All of that is going to be built on and will grow.

There is an issue in Dublin. The local authorities need to be engaged with when it comes to the provision of sporting facilities. Other local authorities around the country do it far better.

The Taoiseach oversees the task force.