Cork county mayor seeking to join forces with city counterpart to push for sport campus

The Mayor of County Cork is to seek support from the city’s lord mayor and his council for a joint effort to persuade the Government to build a Sport Ireland campus in the region.

Cork County Council is, meanwhile, writing to Taoiseach Micheál Martin and sports minister Patrick O’Donovan requesting the move.

It comes after a call by Social Democrats councillor Eamonn Horgan for the facility, similar to the one in Dublin, received unanimous cross-party support from council colleagues.

“A county of Cork’s size and sporting pedigree should not be without facilities that are considered standard elsewhere,” said Mr Horgan.

“Athletes should not have to travel across the country to access high-performance supports, sports science expertise, or specialist training environments. Nor should growing communities be left without the recreational infrastructure needed to promote healthier lifestyles.

“We have three Olympic-standard swimming pools in the country, two of these are in universities and the other is in the Sport Ireland Campus in Dublin. The last of these opened in 2012. What worries me is that there are no more in the pipeline.

“This is not just for Cork. It’s needed for proper fair regional development in sports facilities. It would serve the southern half of the country. There’s a huge deficit in sporting infrastructure in the county and in the southern region in general.”

Investment in south of Ireland

Mr Horgan said a second Sport Ireland National Campus would be an investment in the entire south of Ireland.

“It would support athletes from Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Clare, Tipperary, and Waterford while creating jobs, attracting international events, boosting tourism and encouraging greater participation in sport and physical activity,” he added.

“I am calling on the Government, with Sport Ireland, to commission a feasibility study into the development of a second Sport Ireland National Campus in Co Cork and to include the project as a strategic priority within Ireland's future national sporting infrastructure programme."

He said planning for this has to start now as the newly revised County Development Plan envisages the population of county Cork will grow by 100,000 by 2024.

Labour’s Ronan Sheehan said: “This motion should be pursued aggressively by whatever means we can find.”

Mayor of County Cork Bernard Moynihan said he would be seeking support for the facility from Fine Gael councillor Damian Boylan, Lord Mayor of Cork.

Cork County Council CEO Moira Murrell also supported the proposal, saying that she and her officials would raise it with their City Hall counterparts.