Of the adult population in Ireland 46 per cent attended a sports fixture over the last 12 months while six per cent attended a sports fixture outside the country. Given the overlap between these two groups it is estimated that 47 per cent of the Irish adult population attended at least one sports fixture in the 12-month period.

The breakdown of numbers according to sex, unsurprisingly indicates that more males than females - almost twice as many - attended at least one sports fixture domestically and three times as many men as women travelled to watch a sporting fixture.

The GAA dominated the attendance figures and accounted for 57 per cent of sports attendances in Ireland. That figure breaks down into 34 per cent for football and 23 per cent for hurling.

Both soccer and rugby, considered to be part of the triumvirate of the major Irish sports, trail a long way behind the national games. Soccer accounts for 16 per cent of attendances while rugby represents eight per cent. In fact the GAA eclipses all the other sports combined.

Only two other sports, golf and equestrian events, rise above the one per cent mark, although the study did not extend to dog racing or horse racing, both of which attract substantial numbers on regular occasions. The attendances of all of the other sports combined represent 16 per cent of the population.

The results also show that the age group that attends most events in Ireland is between 18 and 24. Of this age group 70 per cent have been to a sports event in the last year. But interestingly the male attendance rates, although they do decline as age increases, do not fall dramatically and stay around the 60 per cent mark until the 65-plus age bracket. Even though there is a more marked decline for this group, it is the case that over 30 per cent of them had attended a sports event in the last 12 months. The figures confirm that sport plays a more significant role over the full life course of men than it does for women.

For female attendance rates the graph is different and the peak comes for the grouping of women between 40 and 49 years old with less than 10 per cent of women in the 65-plus age group attending an event in the last 12 months.

The peak for this female age group is explained by the fact that attendances for children's sport by parents account for one in four of all sports attendances and for almost two thirds of women in their 40s. Women in their 40s are the most likely group to have children of a sports-playing age.

The survey notes with interest the large quantitative impact that children's sport has on the sporting engagement of adults. Look no further than rugby's Leinster Senior Cup final at Lansdowne Road, which has attracted in recent years more than 17,000 people.

The survey also asked why people attended sporting events. With regard to juvenile events, 61 per cent of women and 31 per cent of men said they watch these activities because their children are playing.

Again age groups were an important factor here and 62 per cent of men between 40 and 49 attended because of their children while those men aged between 25 and 29 had a zero per cent attendance rating.

In the absence of GAA as an international event, soccer is the most popular sport for people to attend outside of Ireland and represents 57 per cent of the total. Rugby comes in second with 14 per cent and motor racing third with six per cent.

An important conclusion the report comes to is the almost complete absence of violence or threatening crowd behaviour at Irish sports events.