The Minister for Sport has said that he's currently developing plans to reintroduce crowds back into sporting events across Ireland.
Speaking on Newstalk, Jack Chambers reaffirmed that 40,000 people will be in attendance at the All-Ireland hurling and football finals. He also said that Minister Catherine Martin is working on a similar initiative for the arts, culture and live sector.
In terms of the crowds allowed at sporting events, Chambers said: "We will have 40,000 there at Croke Park for the two All Ireland finals.
"And what I'm looking to do now in the next two or three weeks is actually to progress beyond pilot events so that we set a baseline - not only for the larger stadiums - but also for the many for the smaller stadium and ordinary fixtures that we have across our communities, the success of the vaccination rollout allows that."
The Fianna Fail TD also elaborated on plans for the cultural sector which has been a topic of discussion this week following Laois County Council's decision not to provide Electric Picnic with a licence for this year's event.
"Minister Martin is also working on a plan for the arts and live events sector so that's they'll see a roadmap now to reopen as well. I know many in that same sector have been very disheartened over the last number of months with closures and restrictions due to COVID, but we can look forward with positivity with the success of the vaccination rollout and that collective protection that we have."
"The link between case incidence and hospitalization has been significantly weakened and we've seen the deputy CMO outline that in the last couple of days. We're ambitious to get as many people back into, whether it's their stadium or in, or live events over the coming weeks and months, and Mr Martin will outline further plans specifically to the arts, culture and live events sector."
With sport forming a massive part of his remit, Chambers was inevitably asked to offer his comments on Kellie Harrington's stunning win in Tokyo.
In doing so, the Dubliner has become only the third ever Irish woman to win an Olympic gold medal and only the ninth Irish person ever to win a gold medal in total.
However, reports emerged that the boxing club where Harrington began her career only has one toilet that caters for males despite continual pleas for Government funding.
Sandra and Pat Walsh who help to run the Buckingham Street club in Dublin’s north inner city have been inundated with applications from youngsters who want to join the club.
However, the boxing club has had to put numerous applications on hold simply because there is only one toilet.
Minister Chambers said that a lot more will be done to increase funding and that an emphasis will be placed on awarding grants to clubs "who may not have been allocated a grant previously"
"I'm ambitious as a new minister in this government to do a lot more and prior to the Olympics, we launched a new High-Performance Strategy. A key part of that is around horizon planning, identifying talent at an early age and backing that the whole way through by focusing on personal sports, welfare, financial supports, facilities, equipment and also expert coaching. That holistic support is extremely important," he said.
During the conversation, Chambers said that he "accepts the point" that it's unacceptable for females to be deprived of toilet facilities and that he'll be looking to rectify this type of inequality.
"That's why we're in a process now at the national development plan, we have a sports capital program. Only last week, we announced 60 million euro in funding for equipment grants and the emphasis on that and the scoring criteria that are around. For example, female participation in sport. There's a huge emphasis on that in the scoring criteria and how grants are allocated.
"We're also looking at the deficit of facilities and infrastructure. We're announcing sports capital grants later on this year and the emphasis on how the allocation process works, as I've said, is around clubs who may not have been allocated a grant previously, giving them that opportunity.
"We have the large scale sports infrastructure fund and we engage with the national governing bodies and trying to strengthen the infrastructure so that we can provide that the best facilities and support for athletes and for the public. We're ambitious about growing that over the next number of years, and I think you'll see in the budgetary allocations that strengthened this year and into next year," he said.
