Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Deputy is a bit like the media who think because I have become a Minister of State that I cannot represent my constituency. I want to tell the media I will represent my constituency. I am not speaking about grant aid, I am speaking about health, social welfare and agriculture. To answer the question, every application will be judged on its merit and criteria will be set.

The Deputy asked about shared facilities and she is correct in what she said. We want to target facilities that will be shared and used so we do not have facilities throughout the country lying idle for the summer months, at weekends or during the week. Facilities should be made available. This country has limited resources and the programme will provide €30 million. On a previous occasion it provided €100 million but we expect to get better value now. We expect costs to decrease by 30%. We believe many of the costs on the previous occasion were inflated. Many clubs took on schemes and never finished them or drew down the funding because they ran into difficulties. We hope to target disadvantaged areas and facilities that will be completed, particularly from the bottom up. This is my proposal and I hope to carry it through.

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