Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I emphasised very specifically that it is not our intention to punish individual soccer clubs. On the contrary, our intention is to ensure that soccer clubs get the support they need to develop their facilities and to develop in every other way as well. I specifically emphasised that we do not want to punish individual local soccer clubs. At present the sports capital programme for 2018 is being administered. It is hoped the equipment-only element of that programme will be completed and ready for allocation in a few weeks. There have been 635 applications under that section. By the autumn we hope to have the remaining applications under that scheme dealt with. There were 2,337 applications in total from throughout the country, which is a large number to process. However, we hope to have those available in autumn. We said that the association itself can apply directly under the sports capital programme and under the large-scale sporting infrastructure fund. While we are not proposing that we prevent allocations being made, we said that we would prevent payments from being made in the event that the progress we want to see on governance and other issues is not made. I want it to go out loud and clear from this committee that we do not want to see people at grassroots level, including the front line, the volunteers and the participants, affected under the sports capital programme over this issue. We want to continue to support those people.