Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The budget is €40 million. I hoped that the scheme would come in somewhere around €39 million and I would be left to wonder what to do with the remaining €1 million. More than €163 million has been sought. I assume that the Vice Chairman is familiar with the New Testament and the miracle of the seven loaves and fishes. It would be great if we could replicate the miracle with sports capital funding. We want to distribute the money to the sporting organisations as quickly as possible but the officials in the sports capital unit are faced with a massive administrative load. Initially, we hope to deal with the 2017 invalid applications that have been resubmitted. We would love to complete this work before Christmas but I do not want to tie the Department to that deadline as progress depends on a number of moving parts.