Every day, in communities across the country, Sport Ireland continues to help people get active by removing barriers to participation in sport and physical activity through our network of Local Sports Partnerships (LSPs) and National Governing Bodies (NGBs). The LSPs and NGBs share Sport Ireland’s passion in getting Ireland physically active, involved in sport and ensuring everyone in the community has the chance to be included.
The Sport Ireland Participation Plan is built on and guided by the National Sports Policy 2018-2027 (NSP) and the Sport Ireland Strategy 2018-2022. The Participation Plan will also take into consideration Healthy Ireland – A Framework for Improved Health and Wellbeing 2013–2025 and the National Physical Activity Plan.
The plan will also take account of recent global and national developments. The COVID 19 pandemic has had a huge impact on which sports Irish people take part in, with individual sports and activities such as walking, running and cycling experiencing unprecedented growth, while some team and facility based sports experienced unprecedented decline.
This plan will aim to maintain the growth where it has been gained and recover the losses where they have occurred. This plan welcomes the establishment of a new government and a new Ministerial Department in the form of the Department of Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht.
The 2020 programme for Government has clearly set out new and ambitious objectives for sport to deliver on, most notably in the sports participation goals, which increased from 50% of adults regularly playing sport, as set out in the 2018 National Sports Policy to 60% of adults regularly playing sport by 2027.
In this context the Sport Ireland Participation Plan identifies what Sport Ireland aims to achieve from 2021 to the end of 2024, how we propose to achieve it, and what resources will be required to achieve these goals over the next five years.