Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I thank Deputy McLellan for tabling this question because there was misinformation in the national and local media in regard to the applications. We received applications for 63 swimming pools and allocated funding for 56. In regard to the reasons the remaining seven pools did not get funding, some of the local authorities were offered funding by the Department under the jobs initiative but they were not able to draw down the funds by the end of the year and two local authorities recently received funding under the previous scheme. Given that every application would have received money, when Labour Party and Fianna Fáil councillors in Dublin make statements in future they might get their facts right. Every local authority could have been funded under this scheme but some of them could not draw down the funding on time or were funded under the previous scheme.

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