John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 10, 17 and 20 together.

An inter-agency steering group comprising representatives from my Department, the Department of Education and Science, the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and the Department of Finance, in addition to representatives of the Irish Sports Council, Campus and Stadium Ireland Development Limited and the County and City Managers' Association has been established to oversee the development of a sports facilities strategy.

One of the first tasks to be addressed by the group has been to define the scope of the proposed audit of sports facilities. In doing so it consulted with the Sports Council for Northern Ireland, which has recently completed work on its own audit of facilities.

It has been decided to divide the work into two distinct phases, initially concentrating on the establishment of a comprehensive database of national and regional sports facilities with the second phase focusing on sports facilities at local level. This approach is based on an immediate need to assemble data on existing key strategic facilities which is vital to the formation of an effective long-term strategy. This element of the overall project will be supervised by a sub-group which will be assisted in its work by a representative from the Central Statistics Office experienced in data collection and questionnaire design.

It is likely therefore that obtaining information on sports facilities located at third level educational facilities will form part of the first phase while information on sports facilities located at post-primary schools will form part of the second phase of the audit. While it will be a challenging task to carry out such a comprehensive exercise, it will be of enormous value in establishing the level of need that still exists in the sports sector and in helping to determine future priorities.

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