An increase in home-grown and underage coaches will be the main target in the second phase of the National Coaching Development Programme which was announced at Croke Park yesterday.

The first cycle of the programme, which began in 1993 and is run by the National Coaching and Training Centre in Limerick, has already seen over 11,000 coaches and 300 coach tutors educated through the system. Minister for Sport, Dr Jim McDaid, welcomed the programme "in the need to identify, educate, deploy and support coaches to work with young people and with our high performers in a quality way".

A panel of coaches at the announcement included Irish youths' soccer coach Brian Kerr, who said that new coaching structures in the country "have allowed us to take what we have on offer here and make the best of it".