I will start on football by wishing our lads the very best of luck tonight. I will also stay on the issue of sport more generally because in that welcome, we see a disparity between those who have and those who have not in this country. One of the players carrying the hopes of the nation on his back tonight is Troy Parrott. Troy comes from Portland Place in the heart of Dublin's north inner city, a community that has produced extraordinary supporting talent, not because of what the State has provided but in spite of what it has not. We are very good in this country at celebrating our sporting heroes with the jerseys, the flags and even, I hope, the open top buses soon. What we are less good at is being honest about the gap between how loudly we celebrate these athletes and how we little we invested in the communities that produced them.

There is not a single full-sized football pitch available to children in Dublin's inner city, north or south. That is something I have raised on numerous occasions in the House. The only full-sized pitch in the locality at all is Croke Park and that very much remains behind closed doors for most people in this Chamber. That is a predictable result of a funding model that was never designed to reach communities like Dublin's north inner city. The ESRI identified nearly 20 years ago that sport funding in Ireland is structurally regressive, flowing to clubs that already have facilities in communities that already participate at scale.

Today, the Irish Sports Monitor shows a 19-point gap in participation between higher and lower socioeconomic groups. The main Government parties have invested over €1 billion in sport since 2018 and that gap has not changed in two years. Where is the money going? The Parliamentary Budget Office has answered that question clearly. Dublin received €26.50 per person under the sports capital programme. The national average is €54. County Leitrim received over €100 per head. This is not about urban versus rural; it is about fairness. The most densely populated county in the State with the highest concentration of disadvantaged communities gets less than half the national average per head and we know exactly why.

To access the sports capital programme for capital work, communities need to own their land outright or hold a lease of at least 21 years' duration. The communities that already have facilities get more and the communities that have nothing remain locked out. That is exactly why golf clubs in this State apply at for this funding exactly three times the rate of boxing clubs, not because golf matters more but because golf clubs and the like have the cultural capital to access the system.

The Pobal deprivation index was designed to weight applications towards disadvantaged areas but an application that has not been submitted cannot be weighted. A community with no land, no lease and no 21-year title cannot be prioritised. Tonight we will cheer on Troy Parrott and the rest of the team and tomorrow morning the Government will return to a funding model that makes the next Troy Parrot less likely, not more likely. When will the Government will commit to direct State investment in public sporting infrastructure in disadvantaged urban communities? A situation where Dublin's inner city, north and south, does not have an 11-a-side pitch is not sustainable.

I thank the Deputy. I acknowledge his community and constituency have done more than its fair share for moments of incredible national sporting pride, no more so than Troy currently. I acknowledge that it is some community he represents in terms of the scale of national heroes it is producing. If I can be slightly parochial, in terms of a Bray woman, I hope that Katie Taylor might get that retirement fight in the large Croke Park facility in the Deputy's constituency as well, but maybe that is for another day.

The Deputy made a serious point. I will not say I agree or disagree with it but I do take the point about needing to ensure the funding is getting to those most in need. The Deputy was not intending to do this but disadvantage can be both rural and urban and in fairness, the Deputy acknowledged that. Indeed the cost sometimes of providing facilities in more sparsely populated communities can also be greater. While the figures produced by the Deputy are validated and I do not disagree with them, it is not always comparing apples for apples and oranges for oranges. However, the broader point the Deputy makes about the lack of a full-sized pitch for the use of children in the inner city, north or south, is a very valid and real one and one I will commit the Government to working constructively with the Deputy's community, constituency and Dublin City Council on.

We are planning on opening a new sports capital round of funding shortly. I do not have the exact date but I expect it to open in the coming weeks. I will speak with the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, and the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, about the points the Deputy made on that. We are increasing the level of funding for sport in a very real way. Part of the Deputy's question to us is whether we can make progress in bridging some of that funding gap. I am certainly up for that challenge and I know Government colleagues are as well.

The Deputy mentioned golf. I am not suggesting the Deputy is, but sometimes these debates can become zero-sum games. There is an opportunity to get the model right for everybody. Golf has brought great success to this country also. We will host the Ryder Cup. There are communities and young people I hope that will inspire. There are young people I hope soccer will inspire. We had the Olympics recently and the inspiration Kellie Harrington in the Deputy's community provided. If the question is whether we can do more through our sports funding to target disadvantage, urban and rural, and specifically the issues in relation to a full-sized pitch in the Deputy's own community, the answer is, "Yes". I will genuinely work in good faith with the Deputy and with colleagues to make progress on the matter.

The heart of this issue for me is not about the success. Very few children will ever reach the scale of Troy Parrott or Kellie Harrington. All too often I have to take a phone call from a coach who is dealing with kids who are oftentimes coming from overcrowded and disadvantaged backgrounds, to tell me that their pitch booking has been cancelled or they do not have playing facilities.

The inability to play on a pitch has an impact on their ability to be inspired tonight by somebody like Troy Parrott and take up a ball and head out on a Saturday morning. There is a disparity in simply being able to access sport. That impacts in a way that will not only be felt in medals, trophies, buses or jerseys but in the way that kids will not have access to a role model, to be just able to go out and release the energy kids get to do in sport. This is not just about medals or world cups. It is actually about giving the capacity to young people in disadvantaged communities to play at a scale experienced by other kids in more affluent areas. That is why the sports capital programme needs to involve direct State investment into infrastructure. Anything else is a failure of the same people we will be celebrating tonight and those who will come after them.

I agree fully with what the Deputy said. I used to play underage soccer for Greystones United; I think I let seven goals in in one game. I was never allowed in goals again. I knew soccer was not going to work out for me. The Deputy's broader point is right because it is about the sense of community, providing our children and young people with focus, purpose, a sense of belonging and place and health and well-being. The return on investment is manifold. I say this in good faith; I would like to understand more why there is that situation with the lack of a full-size pitch. I am not making excuses but there may be lack of green space. I do not know. I am happy to engage with the Deputy, the city council and the relevant Ministers. Let us see if some good can come from this discussion. Some things are political and some things just make sense to work on together and I am happy to do that.