The FAI have unveiled a two-year women's and girls' football action plan, aimed at fully harnessing rising participation levels across the country.
Head of women's and girls' football Hannah Dingley made the presentation at Dublin's Mansion House on Tuesday evening.
Delivering a women's and girls' football strategy was one of the stated aims in the FAI Football Pathways Plan that was released 13 months ago.
The 2025-'27 plan outlines a mission to improve participation, pathways and performance. Expanding on how that will be achieved, it says the targets are to "create positive participation experiences for all; to develop more and better Irish players, and routes into and through the game; to develop winning senior teams at club and country level".
Details on exactly how that will be accomplished were relatively vague. The question of finances will always hang over any FAI ambitions, and though the plan has broad aims to capitalise on rising participation levels, there is no specific solutions offered on how facilities will be improved. Currently only 33% of amateur clubs have female-friendly toilet facilities for example.
The FAI intend to establish a second division in the SSE Airtricity Women's Premier Division (that was first mentioned in the 2024 Football Pathways Plan), while Dingley also stressed the need to encourage more "recreational" football, removing the competitive boundaries at grassroots level that may discourage some girls from staying in the game.
Dingley also said it's important to have a woman on the football committee at every grassroots club in the country.
She committed to implementing research specific to the performance and wellbeing for female players, referencing diet among the issues not.
The ratio of boys to girls playing football has reduced from 6:1 to 3:1 over the last six years, while 39% of coaches on the UEFA Licence courses were female.
Over 45,000 women and girls are registered as playing regular competitive football in Ireland.
Dingley started in her role last May, succeeding Eileen Gleeson after she'd been appointed permanent head coach of the Republic of Ireland the previous December.
In July 2023 Dingley became the first woman to manage a men's team in the English Football League when she temporarily took the reins at Forest Green in League Two. The Englishwoman had been the club's academy manager, establishing a girls academy at Forest Green in 2021.
