State spent €16m to get Ryder Cup

The State spent nearly €16 million to secure the rights to stage the Ryder Cup and to develop its tourism potential, Minister for Sport John O'Donoghue said yesterday.

The Minister told the Dáil, in answer to a parliamentary question, that €4.9 million had been paid to the PGA European Tour under the terms of an agreement signed in 1998 to hold the event in Ireland.

Mr O'Donoghue said that the total expenditure also included an allocation of €4.5 million this year to Fáilte Ireland to support an enhanced marketing and promotional campaign around the Ryder Cup.

He said this included a national branding programme, a number of golf marketing initiatives and support for a complementary programme of Ryder Cup events such as the official opening and closing ceremonies.

"The benefits of the Ryder Cup, which will take place in the K Club, Co Kildare, from September 22nd to 24th, 2006, are enormous and include television coverage to over 550 million homes worldwide, with a potential audience of up to one billion viewers.

"It is unlikely that Ireland will ever again host a sporting event which attracts as much worldwide interest as the Ryder Cup, and it is important that we continue to maximise the enormous potential that exists to capitalise on the event," he said.

Fine Gael spokesman on sport, Jimmy Deenihan TD, who raised the matter, said given that nearly €16 million of taxpayers' money had been spent on bringing the event to Ireland, it was grossly unfair that the Ryder Cup would not be broadcast free-to-air on terrestrial television.

He said the tournament would be only available on subscription TV, reducing access to only about one-in-five households in the State.

He said it would have been "a simple matter" for the Government to add the Ryder Cup to the official list of sporting events that were made available on free- to-air television.