Community Games secures funding of €110,000 from the Sport Ireland Resilience Fund

Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport & Media, Catherine Martin TD and Minister of State for Sport and Gaeltacht Affairs, Jack Chambers TD, yesterday announced an unprecedented €85 million funding package for the Irish sport sector, which has been significantly impacted by the various Covid-19 restrictions imposed since March 2020.

The Sport Resilience Fund will address the existential threat to National Governing Bodies and their club networks, allowing sports organisations to off-set significant losses incurred in recent months and allow planning for 2021 and was established by the government in recognition that the sports sector is one of the worst impacted sectors by Covid19.

Following the submission of a  comprehensive grant application in September, Community Games were successfully awarded €110,000.  

€50,000 of the fund is to cover Area/County losses following an initial internal application submission and the remaining €60,000 is to support Community Games as an NGB to offset loss of income incurred in 2020 and to support new e-learning systems and virtual activities. 

Community Games Chief Executive David Hoysted on receiving the news said:

"This is very positive  for Community Games and I'd like to express my thanks on behalf of the organisation to Chairperson of Sport Ireland Kieran Mulvey, CEO John Treacy and all the staff at Sport Ireland for their assistance throughout the year.   I'd like to also thank the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport & Media for addressing the needs of grassroots sport in Ireland in these unprecedented times."

He added, "Work will commence immediately on reviewing and assessing the needs as outlined in each submission upon application to the Club Resilience Fund.  We will be in contact with Areas and Counties in relation to distribution of the fund allocated to Community Games in the near future."

Community Games President, Gerry McGuinness said "Without a doubt 2020 has been a very challenging year for Community Games and most of all for our participants this year, despite all this we've diversified and  managed to run a series of online and virtual events that saw over 5,000 children part and where we gave out over 150 medals.  I would like to sincerely thank Sport Ireland for their assistance."