Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have made inquiries in the Department about how we can do this. The FAI is trying to get a handle on what has been promised, what facilities have gone ahead based on promises and so forth. That work is under way. I am keen to find out about that. I have made contact with a number of clubs in my constituency to ask about the situation in that regard. There appear to be different models of draw-down and different models regarding who is paying back the money or where the money comes from. In one club the funding was provided to the club from a finance agency and the FAI was due to pay back the agency, with the club only paying interest. A development went ahead on the basis of that set-up.

These are matters we are trying to get on top of in order to find out exactly what has been promised and what the implications will be if clubs have factored projected income they had been promised in the future into their business plans and if that income is not available now. The reason is that I am keen to help and make life easier for the clubs and the volunteers. We will see what we can do to help them because the last thing we want is clubs and volunteers who have been audacious enough to put facilities in place for their communities to then find themselves in difficult financial situations as a result of what, effectively, would be a broken promise. It is difficult to find a pattern even in terms of how those decisions were made, but we are trying to get on top of that.