People with low incomes and low educational attainment are far less likely to participate in sport than those with higher incomes and a third-level education, according to an ESRI report commissioned by the Irish Sports Council.
Fair Play? Sport and Social Disadvantage in Ireland concludes that a person in the richest 25 per cent of the population and who has a degree is five times more likely to play a sport than someone in the poorest quarter who left school after their Junior Certificate. Similar disparities were found in sports club membership.
Launching the report, Minister for Sport John O'Donoghue said the study "contributes significantly to our understanding of sport in Ireland".
The report calls for a change in the way funds are distributed, and says money being spent on sport is flowing from poorer to wealthier sections of the population. It points out that lottery tickets are disproportionately bought by the less well off. Eighty per cent of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism's sports budget comes from the National Lottery.
However, the report says there is no evidence that people in more disadvantaged circumstances are less motivated or less interested in sport. It concludes that while the focus was previously on developing facilities, this is no longer a key factor in encouraging people to take part.
The survey of 3,000 people, carried out in 2003, finds that 43 per cent of people who play sport have a third-level qualification, compared to 28 per cent in the wider population. People who stay in full-time education further into adulthood are also more likely to play more than one sport and to make the switch from team to individual sports.
The report stresses the importance of the time spent in education, as opposed to the type of qualification achieved. It finds some evidence that disadvantage affects participation from an early age, and that primary schools categorised as "disadvantaged" offer a narrower range of sports.
Linking wealth to sport, the analysis reveals that people on low incomes are more likely never to have played sport, and those who do so are more likely to drop out of sport altogether.
Gender emerges as a major influence on participation. The average 44-year-old man is more than 2½ times more likely than a woman of the same age to play a sport. The analysis finds that the trends are not particular to any one sport, but common across them all.
The report lists 10 "policy implications", and argues that "the relationship between social disadvantage and participation in sport is so strong that it raises issues well beyond sports policy".
It adds that the "substantial public money spent on sport in Ireland is regressive - it is a transfer of resources from the less well off to the better off". To justify spending at the current level, it adds, "requires a fundamental reassessment of the priorities it addresses".
More public funding should be spent on linking non-participants and sporting organisations, and not on providing facilities. At present two-thirds of public funding for sports are devoted to the provision of facilities.
John Treacy, chief executive of the Irish Sports Council, admitted that the strong link between education and sport was unexpected. "But if you look at it logically it makes sense, because if you drop out of the education system you drop out of sport. And when you're in the education system you develop your links with people in clubs, and in sports. And if you're out, you lose that."
