Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 May 2023
7. Deputy Mark Ward asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media the supports that are in place for the Shamrock and Olive Tree Boxing Project to assist them in bringing a small group of Palestinian boxers and coaches to Ireland in August as part of their sporting cultural exchange; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [23062/23]
View answerI appreciate the Minister of State taking the question. What supports are in place for the Shamrock and Olive Tree Boxing Project, to assist it in bringing a small group of Palestinian boxers and coaches to Ireland in August, as part of a sporting and cultural exchange? I ask the Minister of State to make a statement on the matter.
Sport Ireland is the statutory body with responsibility for the development of sport, increasing participation at all levels and raising standards. This includes the allocation of funding across its various programmes. Sport Ireland does not provide direct funding for clubs or individuals, but channels it through the national governing bodies. There is no mechanism by which Sport Ireland can allocate funding outside of this process, and there is no direct funding scheme though which Sport Ireland can support sporting exchanges or events such as this.
Sport Ireland allocates its funding for boxing to the Irish Athletic Boxing Association, IABA. As the Deputy will be aware, the IABA has made significant progress in implementing governance reforms over the past six to nine months. In February of this year, I was pleased to announce core funding of €525,000 for the IABA this year as part of Sport Ireland’s allocations to sporting national governing bodies. This represents a €25,000 increase on the 2022 allocation. This funding, allied to €965,000 in high performance funding for this year, demonstrates the Government’s commitment to supporting what is our most successful and most important Olympic sport, and a sport that, at grassroots level, reaches communities that many other sports do not.
I would advise the boxing clubs involved with the Shamrock and Olive Tree Boxing Project to engage with the IABA, through their established channels, to see what support might be available for this exchange. I regret that neither my Department nor Sport Ireland has any funding stream through which this initiative can be directly supported. Sport is an important vehicle for developing cultural relations, and I would like to wish the project every success with the exchange.
Just to provide a bit of background, the Shamrock and Olive Tree Boxing Project sport and cultural exchange is between Ireland and Palestine, the shamrock being the symbol of Ireland and the olive tree being the symbol of Palestine. It is an all-Ireland initiative. We have boxers and clubs from Dublin, Belfast and Waterford taking part, linked in with El Barrio Boxing Club in Ramallah. For the sake of full disclosure I should say that I was not part of the group at the start, but I was invited to be part of the delegation that visited Palestine in November of last year. We got fantastic support from the Irish consulate in Ramallah, and also from the Ministry of Sport in Palestine. Palestinian boxers will be coming over here later this year. It might be in August, but that might be too early because of visa issues. The question I asked was not about Sport Ireland; I asked what supports the Department can give to this sporting and cultural initiative.
The reason I referred to Sport Ireland is that all the money we give to boxing goes through Sport Ireland. That is probably the answer I am giving here today. We are very supportive of these initiatives and there may be other avenues of support available to the project, indeed, directly through the IABA, which gets more than €500,000 in direct funding from us every year. I do not know, but there may well be funding available from the Department of Foreign Affairs or the local authorities in the area. I urge the Deputy to look at that.
If he does not mind, I will take just a few seconds just to talk about boxing. We are very happy with the governance changes that have taken place in the IABA. However, I have to say our boxers and our boxing association are facing unprecedented challenges navigating the geopolitical scene at the moment, particularly in relation to the International Boxing Association. I wish to let the boxing community know that yesterday I met two of the directors of the World Boxing Association, WBA. We are working very hard, as a Government, to give it support to ensure that our boxers have all of the avenues all around the world available to them to participate at the highest competitive levels, which is really important. We are working really hard with the WBA and the Olympic movement to make sure that boxing remains an Olympic sport into the future, because as people will know, that position is seriously threatened at the moment by what is going on at a global level.
I agree with the Minister of State that we have a big history of boxing in this country. I also want to take the opportunity to wish Katie Taylor all the best in her fight at the weekend. My understanding is that the Department offered to support Katie Taylor in putting on that fight over the weekend when it was running into difficulties. I am asking for the same level of support, if any is available, in this instance. I am just not talking about financial support. When we were over there, the Ministry of Sport in Ramallah hired the bus for us and provided some of the boxers with accommodation and stuff like that. I am not just talking about big financial support. Since we have been over there, we have left a mark behind us. A boxing initiative has been set up in the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank. That is an ongoing initiative, and Irish people are going over and training kids in the refugee camp in the pugilistic skills of boxing. Is there any support that the Department can offer this group?
As I said, Sport Ireland has allocated over €500,000 to the IABA. That is really the only avenue through which we fund boxing. It has increased and it is going to increase. We support it financially. Just to be clear, we did not offer financial assistance to the Katie Taylor fight this week. We met the promoters, and I have to say, the Deputy's own party was advocating very strongly for me to do that. We did meet them and talked to them, but there was no offer of Government funding arising out of that particular exchange. There is a very high bar for those major events as well. I do not know, but there may be funding available from the IABA, the Department of Foreign Affairs or local authorities. I urge the Deputy to look into it. We are happy to help. I can only answer questions for my own Department and it does not have direct funding available for this, but I am certainly willing to be of help to see what other sources might be there, and with the IABA. We recognise that these cultural exchanges are really important. There are lots of avenues available for funding, including EU funding. There is EU funding for town twinning, so there may well be EU funding available for this project. I do not know, but it is something that we can help to investigate.
