IRFU sees walking tracks as a great way to open its facilities and offer wellbeing to the wider community. To support this, the IRFU, in conjunction with Healthy Ireland, is providing a walking tracks upgrade fund for clubs in the 26 counties affiliated to their province.
The purpose of the fund is to support the provision of physical activity opportunities to members and the wider community, with particular focus on attracting people to the club who may have barriers to accessing physical activity in their locality, such as those with mobility restrictions or other inactive groups, such as women and girls and/or local ethnic communities.
The main focus of this tranche of funding will be on upgrading existing facilities, for example, resurfacing existing walking tracks, creating hardcore surfaces on grass tracks to make walking available to a wider audience and increased lighting on existing tracks to make surfaces safer all year round. A small amount of this funding is available to clubs who have already been awarded grant monies, and they can apply through the same link.
Clubs who demonstrate an ability to cover one of the following will be prioritised:
- provide walking to those who don’t have access to a safe, car free space in their immediate environment, rural areas with no footpaths and street lights, etc.
- provide walking to those who have no access to manageable surfaces, wheelchair users, buggies, etc.
- providing links to local community groups that enhance wellbeing, e.g. men’s sheds, inactive women and ethnic minority communities
IRFU will offer pots of funding to clubs for work on walking tracks in lots of up to10k to 20k depending on the scope of the work and the benefits to the local community.
A competitive application process will take place, after which clubs will be evaluated on a number of criteria before an announcement of successful clubs by the Department of Health and IRFU.
Please complete the application form online here, for the 2027 fund. Applications will be open between 22, September to 16, October with funds being announced by the end of 2026.
If you have any questions, please contact the IRFU Health & Wellbeing Co-Ordinator, Meadhbh Lewis on, meadhbh.lewis@irfu.ie