The Irish Examiner’s John Fallon is reporting in the paper this morning that the FAI has completed a review of facilities and put together an investment ‘wish-list’ of €863 million to be spent over an extended 15 year period.

60 percent of the money is to be requested of Government with a further 20 percent coming from local authorities and health services. The remaining 20 percent is envisaged from UEFA and FIFA funding and private investment through a new Ireland Football Facility Fund.

He outlines detail of investment in each League of Ireland ground as well as in eight FAI Regional Centres of Excellence and 32 community hubs.

The plans are understood to include provision for 768 new and upgraded grass pitches, 164 artificial surfaces and 480 sets of floodlights.

The report also lists an investment of €47 million for a National Football Centre as part of the developments taking place as part of the Sport Ireland Campus.

The plans have not been published as yet and it is not apparent from the report where the copy of the plan has come from or whether it is the final document or a draft version.

There is a lot of logic in terms of what is being outlined, and a great degree of sense in terms of having a central plan for the development of facilities.

It does not exactly align though with the manner in which the Government has distributed Capital Grant Funding, largely through individual clubs, the 2023 variant of which is expected to be announced for clubs in the coming weeks.

It is also a substantial number to attach to the project, one which will invite natural criticism from other sectors looking for Government funding and indeed from others within the sporting sector.

While it changes from year to year, and comes in different packages from core to high performance, dormant account to capital infrastructure, it is possible to estimate that the Government invests a round figure of about €150 million each year into sport.

Doing the sums on this reported plan, it comes to an average annual investment just north of €30 million which if that was 20 percent of the total government funding would not be completely out of kilter.

It looks though as if this is purely for infrastructure and that the programme funding which also makes up a substantial part of Government investment would be on top of it.

 

Sport for Business Perspective

Without any confirmation from the FAI or from Government it is too early to pass judgement on the detail of the reported plan, that will come in time.

If it is real and laid out in concrete terms as the report suggests it is though a detailed plan for how the sport can be developed.

Big projects often look too big and too expensive when laid out in their initial form, but which are seen from a different perspective at the other end of the scale.

Imagine if this had been done fifteen years ago, in 2009, what kind of football (and other) infrastructure we would have now around the country.

To put it in perspective, the whole plan would cost only 60 percent of the single building National Children’s Hospital and only 80 percent of the reported cost of the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London.

We will keep up to date on the development of this plan but for now if nothing else, the kite has been flown.