Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 1 February 2017

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Sport in Ireland - Challenges, Strategies and Governance: Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport

1:30 pm

Photo of Patrick O'DonovanPatrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The assessment manual is under way at the moment. Our officials in Killarney have spent much time on this. Last June or July we started looking at a 2016-2017 programme. We wanted to change the criteria to make it, as the Minister, Deputy Ross, said, as easy as possible for people in terms of the qualifications. Mindful of that, we have decided that in advance of the closing date the assessment manual for our officials in Killarney would also be finalised. To be honest, I do not envisage massive change from the last assessment manual in terms of scoring. The Department is very anxious to make sure that our sporting facilities at local and regional level have a particular emphasis on as wide a code as possible, so if there are codes that can share facilities and can demonstrate that they are available to local organisations and local schools, have access programmes for people with disabilities, have clear objectives in terms of participation for minorities, new Irish communities, women and so on, obviously that will be taken into consideration. It can be taken at face value that the assessment manual the Department will use for validation will not deviate much from the last time. We have made it as simple as we can. We have reduced the application process considerably.

This will create huge challenges for the Department because the last time around we had in excess of €150 million worth of valid applications. Based on the fact that we have reduced the criteria considerably and made it easier we are now engaging with people to an extent we did not before. We are meeting people in workshops. We have a YouTube channel. The Department is receiving a huge number of calls on a regular basis. I imagine that the number of valid applications we receive will dramatically increase, and that creates its own pressure then in terms of being able to distribute what is essentially a smaller amount of money.

The one positive that can be taken from that is that we have agreement from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and it is in the programme for Government that this will be annualised. Every January from now on we will be in a position where we will be able to reopen this, so the element of uncertainty that was there before is removed. When I was a backbench Deputy I was inundated with people asking if there would be a sports capital programme each year. We are very conscious of the value of it and we want to maximise it. The €30 million we have this year is a baseline, and we will try to grow it with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.