Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

-----which, of course, has been substantially increased in recent years. Most of the sports council's facilities will remain in place, and this is most important. We have completed an significant amount of capital investments throughout the country in recent years, as the Deputy has indicated. She mentioned the swimming pool programme and five are still under completion out of the 45 we built around the country. It is not as if all development has stopped. The Deputy is right, and I would love to have an ACCESS programme opening again for the arts, and ACCESS 2 for the swimming pool programme, but, again, that is not available to me this year. Choices had to be made and, as I have made clear to the Deputy, whether it is arts, sport or tourism, I wanted to sustain employment as much as possible and market all these facilities as best I can, with good budgets. That is what is being done at home and abroad and as things recover.

If I was to accept multi-annual funding based on current circumstances, it would only be going one way, downhill. We all hope, given the quality of the budget as presented, that we get to mid-year when Ireland will begin to see the benefits of an upturn. If that happens, we should be in a stronger position to look at the funding available in the years ahead.

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