I’d like to start by recognising the enormous achievement of the Welsh national football team in participating in Euro 2016 in France. And as everybody has said, it’s the first time that Wales has accomplished that in 58 years. And yes, the 2-1 win against Slovakia in their first game was impressive, and I couldn’t mention the game without also mentioning one player, Joe Allen from Haverfordwest.

But Wales’s success in sporting events over recent years has indeed already inspired people across the country to become more involved in sport. And it is already widely accepted that major sporting events can, and do, have the potential to boost public participation in sport, and also consequently to increase tourism. I’m not going to run through the list of things that Wales has been involved in because Russell George did that for me. But we do need to take advantage of the momentum that has been created from Wales’s participation in this Euro 2016, and the participation in and staging of those events that were previously mentioned. And we must encourage even more children, young people and adults to take up sport and to continue being active.

We must also reap both the health and the economic benefits that naturally flow on from that. But we must also leave an ongoing legacy for our elite athletes. That is, in any case, an extremely tall order. But it is the case that, since 2008, the active adults survey does demonstrate that 41 per cent of adults are now participating three times a week in some form of activity, and that was only 29 per cent in 2008. It is also the case that that increased activity, when attributed to young people, is even greater.

There is no doubt that we need to improve in some areas the participation in sport and we need to look at why some of those individuals and groups of people don’t actually participate in sport or have the opportunity to participate in sport as much as they could. But nonetheless, we have had improvements and some of those improvements are partly thanks to the Welsh Labour Government’s engagement in a range of work that promotes sport and physical activity. That has achieved improving access to opportunities, it has ensured that physical education meets the needs of our children and young people and it has also helped support community sport and physical activity.

But that is only part of the picture. I think that we can’t go through this debate today without recognising the huge contribution from the masses of volunteers—they were called by Suzy Davies mum-and-dad taxis—but nonetheless they are volunteers. They do actually help achieve a massive 235,000 volunteers right across Wales. It is the case that 10 hours or more a month are spent volunteering. That is an enormous contribution and one, I feel, worthy of stating here today. If we costed that contribution, it would come to £300 million or 15,000 full-time employees. So, that gives an idea of the scale of that contribution.

Moving on to the gaps in sport. I think we must pay attention to the fact that there is a gender gap; that girls seem to fall off as they get into young adulthood. It is the case that there are gaps, and some of them have been mentioned, where poorer children, disabled children and individuals also don’t participate as often as they could. Moving back to what Dai said at the very start, it is the case that if people stay fit, they stay healthy. And if they stay fit and they stay healthy, they don’t find themselves in need of the care. They don’t find themselves to be obese and consequently they don’t find themselves to have some of the diseases that we find so prevalent and so hard to do something about.