Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The question relates to the allocation criteria for the sports capital programme and changes since the last sports capital round in 2008. Responsibility for the sports capital programme has been delegated to the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Ring. However, he is unable to attend the House today as he is in Brussels attending the European Council of Sports Ministers.

As the Deputy will be aware, there is phenomenal interest in this round of the sports capital programme, the first such round since 2008. A total of €30 million has been allocated to the programme in this round, with €26 million to be allocated to local projects and €4 million to regional projects.

With regard to the local projects, as the Deputy will be aware, funding under the sports capital programme is assessed on a county by county basis. Previous rounds were the subject of considerable public disquiet as the allocations between counties did not have a clear rationale. Between 1998 and 2010, a total of €136 per person was provided in sports capital funding across the country. However, the allocations to individual counties varied significantly. While the best performing county received €196 in sports funding per capita, other counties received a little over half of that amount. However, in order to ensure fairness, the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Ring, has decided that funding will be allocated on a per capita basis to each county, with a weighting for past performance. Based on their historical performance since 1998, a weighting of between 90% and 120% will be applied to the per capita allocations to determine how much funding should be provided for each county. This is, of course, based on there being sufficient eligible projects within each county.

With regard to allocations within each county, every valid application is initially assessed and then receives a score based on a set of published criteria. These criteria are published on my Department’s website and include the extent to which the project will increase the levels of participation or improve performance, especially among women and older citizens; the level of socio-economic disadvantage in the area; the technical merits and financial viability; the extent to which applicant will be able to maintain the completed project; whether the facilities will be shared; and the level of sports capital programme or other Government funding previously received.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House.

Two criteria have been added since 2008 - those relating to the sharing of facilities and previous Government funding. In deciding the final allocations of funding to projects within each county the Minister of State and I will have regard to the following: the performance of each application during the assessment process; ensuring a geographic spread of projects within each county; ensuring an appropriate spread of projects between rural and urban areas within each county; and ensuring there is a spread of projects among different sports.

In respect of regional projects, there are four additional criteria analysed in the initial assessment. They are priority as identified by the relevant national governing body of sport; priority as identified by the Irish Sports Council; the location of the facility within the network of national, regional and municipal multi-sports facilities; and linkages with the local authorities' swimming pools programme. This criterion applies to municipal multi-sports facilities applications only.

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