John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)

The national lottery-funded sports capital programme allocates funding to sporting and to voluntary and community organisations at local, regional and national level throughout the country. The programme is advertised on an annual basis.

All applications received under the programme are assessed on an individual basis by my Department in accordance with a detailed set of assessment criteria as specified in the guidelines, terms and conditions that accompany the application form for the programme. Following the assessment process, each application receives a score, which gives its order of priority within its own county.

The assessment process takes into account factors such as the existing level of facilities in an area, the number and quality of the applications received, the amount of funding being sought by each applicant and the strategic positioning of major facilities that may be required as well as the most recent census of population figures. Every effort is made to achieve a balanced geographical spread of funds throughout the country, while also affording priority to projects in areas of social and economic disadvantage. In relation to the 2006 sports capital programme, a total of 1,338 applications were received nationally, of which 1,211 were for projects classified as local and 127 as non-local, that is, projects which were categorised as national, regional or municipal and multi-sport.

I recently announced provisional grant allocations under the 2006 programme in relation to the local applications totalling €53.745 million to 719 projects and I will announce the provisional allocations for the non-local projects in the near future, for which five applications were received from Kildare.

Of 28 applications from County Kildare for local projects this year, 17 were provisionally allocated funding totalling €1.41 million. My Department has written to the remaining 11 applicants enclosing a copy of their assessment and explaining why they were unsuccessful on this occasion, in order to assist with any future applications which they might submit. Ten of these applicants failed to meet basic minimum qualifying conditions as outlined on the application form and the guidelines, terms and conditions of the programme.

A salient point, of which the Deputy may not be aware, is the reduction in the number of applications received from Kildare this year compared with previous years. The overall number of applications from Kildare this year was down by 25% on the number of applications made in each of three previous years, 2003, 2004 and 2005. The Deputy will appreciate that the programme can only respond to the applications received from any particular county in any particular year. A reduced number of applications, taken with the quality of those applications and the amount of funding sought, affects the overall level of funding allocated to a county.

Nevertheless, sports capital funding to County Kildare amounts to €59 per capita since 2003 and the national average over that time is €60 per capita. Since 1998 a total of over €23.4 million in sports capital funding has been allocated to County Kildare. This means that the county, with less than 4.2% of the population, has been allocated over 5.2% of the total national funding since 1998.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

I am satisfied that County Kildare has been treated more than fairly in the administration of the sports capital programme and I believe that the Deputy will agree with me that the funding provided has made a major difference to the range and quality of the sports facilities available throughout the county.

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