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GOLF IRELAND CEO Mark Kennelly says Portmarnock Golf Club is “likely” to host future editions of the Open Championship and the AIG Women’s Open following an expression of support from the Irish government.
The Irish government today expressed their provisional support for the idea, subject to certain targets being met.
It would mark the first time the Open Championship would be held outside Britain or Northern Ireland in its history, with the 154th edition of the tournament to be played at Royal Portrush next year.
“Today’s announcement that Portmarnock Golf Club will likely host both The Open and the AIG Women’s Open is a momentous occasion for golf in Ireland,” said Golf Ireland CEO, Mark Kennelly.
“These historic events will not only be a wonderful spectacle of professional golf, but they will also pave the way for impactful legacy programs that will nurture talent and grow the game across all communities.
“We are particularly excited about the prospect of the AIG Women’s Open taking place in Ireland as it would be a fantastic showcase of women’s golf.
“We thank the Irish Government for their commitment to securing these events and look forward to welcoming golf fans from all over the world to our shores.”
Taoiseach Simon Harris says “the potential to host The Open and the Women’s Open would bring endless opportunities for the country including showcasing Ireland on the world stage and promoting equality in sport.
It would also provide cultural, economic and social benefits and overall, be a major boost for the country.”
The government want to see certain criteria being met in exchange for their full support. These include a full business case being made, along with a full exploration of the costs involved.
They also want a guarantee of multiple iterations of the events at Portmarnock.
The government estimate that 245,000 tickets could be sold per event, and three iterations of the Open along with one AIG Women’s Open could result in a gross economic impact of €338 million.
The government have also announced a funding package of €35-45 million to invest in Portmarnock Golf Club and the surrounding area.
The Open returns to Portrush next year, having been first hosted at the Northern Ireland venue in 2019.
Since the success of that event – won by Shane Lowry – discussions have turned to hosting the tournament in Ireland, with Portmarnock identified as the prime candidate owing to its proximity to the airport and its capacity to host large crowds.
Approximately 250,000 people attended the 2024 Open Championship at Royal Troon, across the course of the week.
Portmarnock Golf Club helped pave their own way to host the events by voting in 2021 to abolish its ban on female membership, and thus in 2022 elected the first nine female members in its 128-year history.
The earliest Portmarnock could host the Open Championship is 2027 – Royal Birkdale in Liverpool confirmed as hosts of the 2026 event – but any potential hosting would likely be at least a few years after that, with some infrastructure challenges to be overcome.
Martin Slumbers, the outgoing CEO of organising body the R & A, said earlier this year the challenges of hosting a championship at Portmarnock were “not trivial.”
“It’s all about getting people in and out of the peninsula”, he said.
“It’s a tight little area, and to move that number of people, you need to be able to treat the people not just properly, but you need to have safety and health and all sorts of things that are really important. So those are issues that need to be resolved.”
Written by Gavin Cooney and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.
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Global? Start at home first.
This government needs to do more to support the largest employer in Ireland, SME’s.
Great country if you are Google etc. God help anyone looking to run their own business tho!
Large players like Google actually distort the market here, welcome as they are.
You have mid level managers thinking 80k is their right, not something that is unheard of in most of Europe. Rent and property prices in Dublin driven crazy by high paying multi-nationals which destroy the competitiveness of the country.
Most of our exports come from 40 US owned companies, over 85% in fact. What a position to place oneself in.
Multi-nationals are lovely to have but they are in terms of economic sustainability and jobs they are a distant second in importance to SME’s.
Double edged sword,
Seanie, multinationals were our one saving grace when the sh!t hit the fan in 2007 so I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss their importance. They also create service industries around them which are equally just as important. And if as you say they represent 85% of our experts what do you propose replaces that? It’s not like we have a tonne of natural resources to tap into.
It is the sheer volume of the Pharma industry that distorts the exports.
We live in hope that America will not need someday to refocus tax at home in a recession or jobs at home for political reasons. What a gamble.
Our trade balance is a complete mirage due to Multi-nationals.
Focusing in on SME’s is much more important than Multinationals, they provide most of this countries jobs and spending.
We’ll never reduce unemployment just using multi-nationals, we’ll never have a sustainable tax base or economy by over relying on them.
There are a lot of sme’s that can be brought up to being large players.
Companies like Kerry Group, Glanbia CRH etc are leading global players in their fields, they are some of our multi-nationals, investing large sums all over globe.
Rental increases have nothing to do with google. It’s to do with the lack of housing supply due to a collapsed construction industry based on FF policy.
Don’t forget the planners J. They are still insisting developers build apartments in the middle of no where despite the obvious demand for 3 and 4 bed houses. I’m amazed this isn’t getting more media attention.
Govt too busy bending over for foreign multinationals and rolling out the red carpet for snakes like Donald Trump to help Irish SMEs. I see they’ve brought in an extra USC level now for self employed people. Shows you where their priorities lie.
Self employed earning over 100k. Hardening throttling enterprise is it?
A self employed person has more right to 100k than a high level manager in someone else’s business.
I haven’t much problem with the higher charge at that level but it is very wrong that it is just targeting the self employed. It should be across the board.
The higher tax rate for the self employed who are on reasonable wages shows that the self employed are actively targeted for bleeding.
C’mere to me, where do I get a job that pays €29 per hour??
Primary teacher!
Be a crappie hooker……
When is the next protest against water charges in Dublin?
NEXT Water charge protest: [NOVEMBER, 1st. DUBLIN]
Would like to see the relationship between average gross pay and net pay between Ireland and rest of EU. We have high gross salaries but I imagine they are so high to make up for all the tax and deductions. Talking Private sector here. Public Sector is another animal completely.
In most of Western Europe the tax take is much higher on average, never mind that property tax and water rates are also higher.
The tax wedge is much higher across Western Europe people, ye might not like that fact but that is still a fact.
That’s simply not true Seanie.
A useful graph to include would be each countries % spend of GDP. Most of the EE states with low cost of labour have less than 40% of GDP spent by governments. This with higher % spend have higher hourly rates. Relationship is striking
To take on them we will have to kick every high productivity business out of Ireland.
That is the key difference, most of them do not have any, at any level.
How is competing with high unemployment, low value businesses with poor national infrastructures a good idea.
Luddite.
That’s not my point at all. But I won’t waste my time or yours educating you
Why are labor costs in Ireland always so distorted?
Fact is the Irish worker has 20 days paid holidays in a year.
In Germany the Worker has 30 days paid annual leave ?
First three days of sick leave is at the employees expense.
In Germany sick pay is covered 100% from day (for a limited period of time)
The books are being seriously cooked here it is a complete lie that the Irish worker is so expensive.
However compare the wages of Lawyers,doctors and the public service teachers and politicians.
Our s are some of the worlds most expensive. The Wage issue is pure profiteer propaganda.
So what if we are still above the EU average, we are cheaper on that scale than most of our competitors. We’ll never beat countries like Spain or Portugal or Cyprus on wages, unless we consider cutting wages by 50% and kicking out the high wage multi-nationals.
We pay professional people, senior managers, doctors etc way too much, in many cases double even what wealthy European countries pay.
Legal fees here are outrageous and it is very wrong and selfish that no Govt. have tackled the Law Society here and its closed shop. It is an extortion on Irish society and deeply damaging to business here.
Do you ever take a break from commenting on here. Find yourself a hobby well ye
Ah yes, it’d be great if we could just not pay all the people that do all the work and watch the money roll in. A capitalists wet dream.
Welcome to Jobridge Ireland…
Yeah great place u can pay your employees as little as possible. Zero hour contracts jobbridge.fcukn assault on the working class
“Is Ireland really ‘the best small country in the world to do business in’?”
Not with that preposition dangling on the end of its sentence it’s not!
I guess I’m just going to have to pay a few per cent extra tax to set up my soon-to-be-highly-lucrative grammar auditing consultancy in a country with some syntactic credibility. Well done Ireland – that’s one more highly skilled job you’ve allowed to slip through your bungling fingers!!!
Only prescriptive grammarians would present such a narrow, limited and mostly historical interpretation of syntax; it belongs back in the 18th century along with Bishop Lowth. Most modern grammarians accept the proposition that language is better analysed in terms of a lexical approach.
Q. Is Ireland…blah blah blah?
A. No
Enda says it is
No
Support Small businesses
Great country if your name is O’Brien
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