I want to talk today about something that has come up here a couple of times in relation to swimming, swimming pools and swimming lessons for our young people. Swim Ireland recently launched a report about the provision of swimming pools in Ireland. This is something I know Swim Ireland has been working on for a good few years. It has done an inventory and looked at the provision of swimming pools in Ireland.

Unfortunately, at the moment there is one swimming pool for every 81,000 people in Ireland compared to, say, Scotland where there is one swimming pool for every 14,000 people. When we talk about investment in sport we often fall into the trap of talking about the big three or the team sports. However, lifelong activity and lifelong sport really happens in the likes of cycling, swimming and walking. It is time to have a discussion about ring-fenced funding for swimming pools.

There used to be a local authority fund for swimming pools. Swim Ireland is calling for that to be reintroduced. That is a good idea. Of our swimming pools, 57% are actually in hotels. Obviously that causes trouble in lots of different ways. Obviously for hotel guests but also from a health and safety point of view or a child-safeguarding point of view as when having swimming lessons in hotels, you cannot really control who is in the hotel and who is in the vicinity of the swimming pool.

It is time for a debate on the issue and perhaps ring-fenced funding in the sports capital funding allocations, for example, for swimming and for swimming pools. It is certainly something that Swim Ireland would welcome I imagine. One more statistic I wanted to share is 25% of our pools were actually built before 1990. We are looking at a lot of them that are dilapidated. There is one across the road from my house and it is an eyesore. I think it is council owned and it is just sitting there. Even if we were to reinvest in the existing swimming pools that would make a huge difference. There is a great initiative over in the Seán MacDermott Street swimming pool, where they are bringing children in from the local area for free swimming lessons. That is driven by increased Government funding but we need to look at even more.