Tax benefits for gym membership would increase exercise and reduce illness, according to an expert.
Ireland Active has called on the Government to introduce the incentives in Budget 2025.
The group is also calling for greater investment in Irish sport.
It’s being seen as a way to try and incentivise personal exercise and reduce rising levels of obesity.
Ireland Active CEO Karl Dunne told Lunchtime Live he believes more people would be more active.
“The benefit would be that it would incentivise more people to become physically active – so they would join gyms and swimming pools – and a knock-on from that is that they will reduce their illness and sickness,” he said.
“It incentivises you to actually go and become physically active or more physically active.
“We’re trying to push the needle on this – as it is, personal exercise is the biggest participation sport in the country, with 15% of adults partaking in physical exercise within gyms.
“That’s followed closely by swimming, which is at 9%.
“So already the two biggest participation sports in the country are personal exercise and swimming.”
Mr Dunne said the scheme is to “incentivise people to exercise – it’s not just for financial gain, it’s actually for their own health.”
Offaly boxing coach Liam says he thinks gym prices will simply rise as a result.
“It would be good news in the perfect world but straight away what will happen here is the gym boys will put up their membership because they know there’s a few pound extra on the other side.
“It just goes to show me how far the Federation of Sport and Sport Ireland are and so far out of touch.
“If they want to tackle obesity and keep people in sport, you do it at a younger age.
“We’re a boxing club in in Edenderry [charging] €40 membership for a whole year and we try to stay open,” he said.
“We get a grant off these boys for, we’ll say €10,000 – that grant is only €7,500 really because €2,300 has to go back in VAT straight away that you don’t get any benefit from.
“A club [which is] a charity organisation, not earning money from friends and people, can’t get VAT back or claim VAT.
“So if they want to do something interesting and something that will actually benefit people what about those volunteers that come into the club and give up their time night after night to train kids… give them a tax break”.
A spinning class using exercise bikes at a gym. Image: MBI / AlamyLiam said there are other options out there.
“Why go and help commercial business by getting a tax break to members to join up? It’s crazy. I don’t like it at all whatsoever,” he said.
He added that such a scheme “takes from the pot” that gives grants to other organisations such as Sports Ireland.
Owner of Number 17 Person Training, John Belton, said he thinks it’s a great idea.
“I think it’s a really welcome initiative and I’m really happy to hear talk around this,” he said.
“I think any sort of incentives to encourage people to exercise is very welcome as far as I’m concerned,” he added.
A Red C poll carried out in June found that 28% of people – or 851,000 adults – said that they would be likely to take out a gym membership if the scheme was introduced.
