FIANNA FAIL has promised to give sport a seat in the Cabinet for the first time if the party is elected to lead the Government, according to a policy document to be published on Monday.

The document also backs campaigns for increased funding for sport from the National Lottery and recommends that the new Sports Council be replaced with a better resourced body, headed up by a chief executive and a full secretariat.

The document, commissioned shortly after the party left office in 1994, has been prepared by Liam Aylward, a former Minister for Sport, and is understood to have the enthusiastic support of party leader Bertie Ahern.

Coming at the start of a general election year, and timed to upstage the Government's strategy document on sport due out within the next few weeks, it will provoke a lot of discussion.

Inevitably, it is the commitment to give sport a senior ministry, to run in tandem with tourism, which confers the Fianna Fail proposal with most significance. Ever since public money became available to sport some 25 years ago, it has been administered by the Department of Education.

Many sports people believe that this arrangement has militated against sport, denying it the profile required to attract a bigger state investment. The argument is supported by statistics which show that in a huge department, with an annual budget of more than £2 billion, the sports section is restricted to spending in the region of just £20 million.

Fianna Fail now argue that the presence at Cabinet meetings of a person with specific responsibility for the promotion of sport and tourism would guarantee a bigger slice of the cake.

Furthermore, it is argued that a new ministry would streamline the present, unwieldy system whereby the departments of Agriculture and Health also fund sport and related activities in specific cases.

Tourism is seen as the ideal partner for sport in government with a big overlap between the two. In 1990, for example, it was estimated that one in three of all tourists in this country, totalling more than 500,000, took part in some sports related activity during their stay.

The need to attract more Lottery funding is based, in part, on the growth of the sport and leisure sector in the economy. According to figures issued by COSPOIR in 1994, sport accounted for £225 million of gross domestic product in 1991. Taken in conjunction with ancillary projects, the figure rose to £560 million, giving full time employment to some 18,200 people.

The most recently published breakdown of National Lottery money shows that 25 per cent of it was distributed to sport and youth. Fianna Fail propose that these two areas should now be split and that sport's share of the takings should not be less than 40 per cent. Effectively, it would mean a doubling of Lottery funding.

Furnished with those additional resources, the organisation to replace the Sports Council would be better placed to reject earlier criticism that because of a shortage of funding its predecessors lacked teeth.

Fianna Fail also recommend the appointment of a full time sports officer in every local authority, creating a network of officials to co ordinate and maximise the use of all available facilities.

Recognising that certain flagship facilities are essential, it endorses proposals to build a 50 metre swimming pool which, it argues, would not just be the preserve of international competitors but rather a focal point for the entire sport.

This project, Fianna Fail believes, would be ideally suited to a joint initiative by the public and private sectors or, alternatively, a working partnership between the sporting authorities in the Republic and Northern Ireland.

On the role of sport in schools, Fianna Fail recommends that at primary level the emphasis should be on fun rather than competition and proposes increased funding for the appointment of more physical education teachers in secondary schools.

The document is to be presented by Mr Ahern in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin on Monday afternoon and the preliminary signs are that it will stimulate much interest at a time when the need for increased state funding and the manner of its distribution is being widely articulated.