John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)

It is difficult to know when an effective and comprehensive national audit of local facilities will be completed. It is a major undertaking. The Sports Council in Northern Ireland embarked on a similar exercise in recent years, and it has taken between two and three years to identify the facilities. I am pleased with the progress of the sports capital programme since 1998. We have now financed approximately 5,600 projects in every city, town, village and parish in the country. That has improved facilities enormously.

With regard to other facilities, criteria which I outlined earlier are used by the Department's officials in assessing various applications. This year, more than 700 applications were successful from a total of almost 1,400. That equates to an approximate 50% success rate. Regional grants have not yet been announced but we hope to announce them in the not too distant future.

The indoor arena to which Deputy Sargent referred is obviously a concept in which I have a great interest. Phase one of Abbotstown should be completed by the end of 2010 or thereabouts, and I certainly hope the question of an indoor arena can be addressed in the context of the next phase of Abbotstown.

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