I move on behalf of Deputy Belton and myself the following motion:
That Dáil Eireann is of opinion that modern swimming and bathing facilities are urgently required for our cities and our towns.
I move the motion specifically to bring to the notice of the Government and the Dáil the rather pathetic and lamentable state of the swimming and bathing facilities that exist throughout the length and breadth of the country. A good deal of capital and a good deal of play has been made from time to time in this country on the question of cleanliness and health. It is an admitted, and indeed a universally agreed fact that one of the most beneficial exercises conceivable, from a medical point of view, in health-giving qualities is that of swimming. But the problem goes a lot further.
I do not know if the Dáil realises that, in fact, in this country we have not got one decent indoor swimming pool or one decent outdoor pool, one of a standard to which you could invite people by way of competition or in which you could properly or adequately train swimmers. I speak from considerable personal experience of the whole problem of swimming and swimming facilities. It falls to a person's lot in his lifetime, I suppose, to become proficient in not more than one or two sports. The one that appealed most to me in my not so distant youth was that of swimming. I found the pathetic and miserable situation that, despite the best endeavours and despite the earnestness of enthusiasts in the swimming arena, the facilities available were so antiquated and inadequate that it was impossible even to allow a person to get himself fit enough to be ready, by proper training, for competitive swimming.
People talk a good deal in this country on many subjects. There is one startling reality in this problem of swimming baths and swimming facilities, and it is that while in this city of Dublin, with its teeming population, there is not available a proper swimming pool of any type, the city of Belfast can provide at least seven good-class indoor swimming pools for its population. The miserable contribution to swimming in Dublin is the Tara Street baths, which may or may not have a water supply according to the fuel situation or a water supply at any particular time. What are alleged to be swimming baths serve many purposes, including the very necessary one of being available, on certain days of the week, to the women of Dublin for the purpose of doing their washing. We had one other swimming pool in Dublin which was of some small value to this extent—that there the youth in the schools were able to avail of it during certain hours, evenings and days of the week to train. I refer to the Iveagh baths, but in recent years it became, far from being a swimming pool, a de-lousing centre for people going to England. That has been the contribution of Dublin City to swimming efforts in this country.
It is many years ago since a little band of real enthusiasts started, developed and worked up the Irish Amateur Swimming Association, an organisation which, incidentally, must commend itself very earnestly to this House in that it is an organisation that knows no border and never has. That organisation addressed repeated exhortations to Government after Government to give it some kind of swimming pools, in some part of the country in which it could do some of the necessary work of preparing swimmers, divers and water polo players for international competitions. One can say that in archaic conditions, and in impossible weather conditions, there has been, in the last seven or eight years, an amazing stride made, an amazing and creditable national effort made by swimmers in this country to improve the standard of their performance: to improve it to such an extent that they were able to complete in various international competitions and, indeed, to send swimmers to complete in the Olympic competitions.
Think of the position that would have existed had there been available in this country, only for one year before the Olympic Games, one swimming pool that would provide facilities so that swimmers and divers could train throughout the year. I say that in at least one sphere, in the diving sphere, Ireland would have made its mark in both the high-board and spring-board diving championships of the world. The position exists in swimming that swimmers have been able to obtain a high standard of performance in a short season in cold water in a small pool—the main pool is that inadequate one at Blackrock, where the main competitions in swimming in this country are held. When swimmers, divers and polo players can in those conditions build themselves into the standard of efficiency that they have achieved, what would happen if we made one genuine effort to provide in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway an adequate swimming pool?
I urge this motion upon the Dáil in a very earnest way. I feel that and basically it would be a tremendously sound idea to develop a proper swimming complex throughout the country. It is a clean, decent, wholesome sport; it is a healthy sport and it is a sport in which the indications are that with any kind of facilities this nation, small as it is, could take a proud place in the athletic world.
I must confess that I have been severely disappointed with the Department of Local Government. I urged upon them in a very special way that they might, even as an interim and expedient measure, make available, before our teams went to complete in the Games, the Iveagh Pool, so that we could train them for three or four months. I felt that this country, sending out into international competition a team of swimmers and divers, might have bestirred itself to make that effort. I feel sorry for the whole amateur swimming association and for all the people who are enthusiastic about swimming that that gesture could not be made. Now, with the tremendous drive to house our people, with the tremendous development of built-up areas, the Department responsible must keep in front of them in all their plans the necessity for giving in all those very populous areas adequate swimming and bathing facilities.
Apart altogether from the element that would appeal to us in the glamour of competition, we have to remember that it is essentially a healthy sport, a sport that will build up in a very pronounced and effective way the body of the child. It is a sport that will give the growing child a confidence and manliness that few other sports will give. It is a sport that encourages a feeling of courage and faternity that few other games encourage. It is something that will solve many of Dr. Browne's burning disease problems. I feel that we are not making proper use of preventive measures when we consider the building up of our boys and girls. We do not make adequate use of our normal resources in the training, in a normal physical way, that will enable them to build up their bodies so that there will be a far more effective resistance to any disease that might threaten them.
Swimming is something that I love. There is something about it that to me has a particular charm and appeal. It is a sport that I have spent a very considerable time at. I have devoted a good deal of my energy to it. But there is more in it than that. There is a cleanliness about it, not only because water is one of the component parts, but there is a cleanlines about it in so far as it develops the muscles in a coordinated kind of way. It keeps the growing boy or girl clean in body and, as well, it keeps them clean in mind.
I have nothing but a complete contempt, an unadulterated contempt, for the lack of appreciation, in the minds of county councils throughout the country, as to the necessity of swimming and bathing facilities in their areas. It is something that can be developed in a not terribly expensive way. To provide adequate pools for the purpose of training or developing our competitive swimmers would not involve any colossal sum. You would need only a fair-sized pool in four or five populous centres. We could easily develop ordinary swimming pools. We could at a reasonable expense provide fresh water swimming pools in the river districts and improve swimming and bathing facilities along our coasts. At the moment these things are shamefully and disgustingly neglected by our local authorities.
I think the time has come when the Dáil should record its appreciation of the urgent need to construct adequate swimming and bathing facilities in this country. The time has come when the work of people like Eddie Heron, for so many years our diving champion and who was at one time referred to by Pete Desjardins, when he was on tour in this country, as the greatest diver he had ever seen, should be properly appreciated.
Eddie Heron won the championship of the British Isles. He was sought after by the United States of America to complete for them on their diving team in the Olympic Games. When a man of that calibre is willing and anxious to train younger people in this excellent sport he should have at his disposal an adequate pool in which to train them and give them the benefit of his mature knowledge and mature coaching. MacCartney of Belfast and Hynes and Brady of Dublin have made startling advances in this sport and have lowered in a quite phenomenal way Irish swimming records over the last few years. These men are now reaching the prime of manhood. They should be given swimming pools of adequate length and accommodation in which they could train the younger people in this magnificent sport. The time has come when the whole country must be awakened to the necessity and the desirability of providing adequate swimming facilities and proper bathing pools. Because of the beneficial effects of swimming on health and physical development everything possible should be done to make the people conscious of the importance of developing this particular type of sport. In its concept and de facto it is the one sport which teaches selfreliance. There is no other recreation to compare with it in that respect. If the young people are encouraged to learn swimming we shall have in this country a stronger, healthier and more courageous youth. The G.A.A. has built stadiums. The Rugby Football Union has built stadiums. Practically every type of sport in this country is catered for to a much greater extent than is swimming. Some of the games played have made us internationally famous. Swimming, water-polo, spring-board and high-board diving can make us equally internationally famous if they are developed. The Irish Amateur Swimming Association deserves some recognition of their repeated efforts to get something done to develop aquatic sports in this country.
