Gavin Cooney

THE FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION of Ireland say the sport has been suffered from under-investment for 20 years and significant investment in facilities is needed for the sport to fulfill its potential and avoid lagging further behind the sport in other European nations. 

The FAI have made their case for that investment in a new document, titled the FAI’s Facility Investment Vision and Strategy, which was compiled following an audit of grassroots and professional facilities across the country. 

The FAI are seeking a total of €863 million to complete 2,500 infrastructure projects over the course of the next 15 years. 

The Association want government to provide 60% of the total (€517 million), with another 20% (€173 million) is forecast to be covered by Local Authorities and the FAI contributing the final 20%. 

Speaking at a press event around the publication of the report, FAI CEO Jonathan Hill said football in Ireland has suffered from under-investment across the last 20 years, saying, “this is not the fault of one single entity, but it is a fact.”

“Any government funding for anything, particularly sport, us going to be emotional”, added FAI chairman Roy Barrett.

“People will have an emotive view, whichever sport they are from. What we have sought to do over the last 18 months is to take the emotion out of it.

“Our role has been to do an audit of the facilities, where we are, and how far the deficit is and against the backdrop of a rising population over the next 15 years and a young population: 26% of our population are under 20.

“Against all those things we have a sport which has been chronically under invested for a long period of time.

“If that underinvestment continues we will have all sorts of problems given the growth of the sport, the relative size of the sport, and the changing demographics would indicate that the demand for football and football facilities will get bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Asked whether he was confident the FAI would receive the funding they require, Barrett replied, “I am certainly confident that we should get funding. We are not in isolation, part of our argument is to say over the last 20 years we have under invested in sport as a country.

“We have spent half of what other countries have done, we are in the bottom tier. Our argument is there should be greater investment in sport and as the largest sport we have the greatest need.” 

The FAI are seeking a significant investment from the government three years after they were bailed out bankruptcy by the taxpayer in a package worth €30 million. 

“I do believe the FAI is in a very different place to where it was two years ago”, said CEO Hill.

“We are coming to the end of the period whereby the Memorandum of Understanding we signed with the government that led to that necessary and much appreciated investment in 2020 is coming to and end.

“As part of that there have been 163 finance and governance recommendations that we were asked to bring into the Association.

“By the end of 2023 we will have achieved all of those. The Association is in a very different place than it was and what happened prior to 2019 will never happen again.”

The FAI say their contribution to this total figure will come from Uefa and Fifa grants and a new fund titled the Ireland Football Facility Fund, which envisioned as a trust to be overseen by an independent chairman. 

The €863 million total is split into three categories: Grassroots, League of Ireland, and international football. 

The Grassroots piece is the largest, coming to a total cost of €426 million.

The FAI want to build eight regional centres across the country, beneath which will sit at least four new centres of excellence per region, to ensure that nobody has to drive more than 30 minutes to play football. 

Included in this topline figure is the building of 128 new pitches and another 48 new artificial pitches, along with the building of 128 new clubhouses and the installation of 480 sets of floodlights. 

The projected League of Ireland facilities upgrade totals €390 million, and the FAI’s report is honest about the current state of training and stadium facilities across the league, describing them as “archaic.”

Across the next 15 years, the FAI want to build and revamp facilities to the point that there are 10 stadia of capacities between 10,000 and 20,000, with another 10 stadia of up to 6,000 capacity. 

The FAI also want each League of Ireland club to have their own academy and training ground, at a projected cost of €140 million. 

Finally, the FAI also want to develop a new National Football Centre at their headquarters in Abbottstown, describing the present facility as “nowhere near the same standard of facilities at comparative European associations”, as it lacks changing rooms, facilities for analysis and presentations, along with sub-standard pitches. 

At a projected cost of €47 million, the FAI want to build a new national football centre building along with three new artificial pitches – one to be covered by a dome – and another three grass pitches, along with changing, analysis, coaching, education, medical, sports science, and equipment storage facilities. 

The full report can be read here. 

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