{"id":400887,"date":"2026-04-16T03:00:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T03:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/400887\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T03:00:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T03:00:20","slug":"cross-party-oireachtas-group-on-improving-domestic-football-to-be-set-up-as-joanna-byrne-hits-out-at-patrick-odonovan-in-dail-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/400887\/","title":{"rendered":"Cross-party Oireachtas group on improving domestic football to be set up as Joanna Byrne hits out at Patrick O\u2019Donovan in D\u00e1il debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Labour TD Ged Nash speaking to the media on the plinth at Leinster House yesterday. Photo: Stephen Collins\/Collins Photos\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/75937e30-a69a-4ce1-8a80-7da713f58d30.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Labour TD Ged Nash speaking to the media on the plinth at Leinster House yesterday. Photo: Stephen Collins\/Collins Photos<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Minister of State for Sport Charlie McConalogue has said there were only six females among the 300 applicants for the new full-time roles in League of Ireland academies created from last October\u2019s Government funding breakthrough.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">This evening, the Statements on Football discussion took place in the D\u00e1il where TDs shared and debated their views on the domestic game, and came following last year\u2019s budget announcement that \u20ac3m will be pumped into the academy system to kick-start a proper underage industry in Ireland. The \u201cmulti-annual commitment\u201d will allow two full-time positions (academy director and head of coaching) to be filled at each LOI of the 22 clubs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour TD Ged Nash speaking to the media on the plinth at Leinster House yesterday. Photo: Stephen Collins\/Collins&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14640,2538,1113,61,60,43,15645,4876],"class_list":["post-400887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-drogheda-united-fc","tag-dundalk-fc","tag-fai","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-patrick-odonovan","tag-sean-oconnor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}