Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As members will be aware, the sports capital programme, SCP, is the Government's primary vehicle to support the development of sports facilities and the purchase of sports equipment. More than 10,000 projects have now benefitted from SCP funding since 1998. The programme has transformed the sporting landscape of Ireland with improvements in the quality and quantity of sporting facilities in virtually every village, town and city in the country. By the time the most recent round of the programme closed for applications on 24 February 2017, it had attracted a record number of 2,320 applications seeking €155 million in grants. Originally, it was envisaged that €30 million would be provided for the sports capital programme in 2017. However, following detailed discussions with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, the Minister and I were delighted to increase the budget. That allowed us to allocate a total of €60 million at the end of 2017 to more than 1,800 different sporting projects. That was an excellent result for Irish sport. All of the details of the allocations are available on the Department's website.

I am aware that later today the committee will discuss funding for minority sports. In that regard, the most recent round of sports capital funding did a very good job in that every single valid application under the local aspect of the programme and two thirds of all valid applications under the regional aspect of the programme received funding. More than 50 different sports benefitted. Once the applications were valid, in particular for the local scheme, funding was given, regardless of the nature of the sport.

A previous criticism of the sports capital programme, which was highlighted on many occasions by this committee, was the fact that there was always a considerable number of invalid applications submitted. It was around 48% in 2012 but by 2013 to 2015 that had dropped to approximately one third and last time we got it down to one fifth. That was as a result of a major streamlining of the application process. For example, what was a 13-page application process was reduced to six pages and that made it much easier for applicants to submit a valid application. However, we are still concerned that one in five applications were invalid and we want to reduce that to zero if possible in the future. We think it would be very important to give every opportunity to future applicants to ensure that a second chance would be provided to invalid applications and that invalidation would not happen on technical grounds. We constantly strive to improve the programme. There is a review process after every round of the sports capital programme. In order to bring about improvements for the next round I have embarked on a nationwide tour to meet with past, present and future applicants to the programme to hear from them. I want to get suggestions and feedback on what they think is working and what needs to be improved. We hope to feed that information into the process of designing the new scheme to ensure further improvement in the 2018 programme.