Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The last time I asked a similar question I got a very different answer, that the Department was conducting a review, some local authorities would not be able to come up with matching funding and the Department was to talk to those local authorities with a view to closing it off so that the Department could open up the programme to local authorities which might be able to come up with the matching funding.

In 2000, when the scheme was opened up, each local authority was told that it could nominate no more than two locations. There were at least four locations - south Dublin, Wexford, Wicklow and Kerry - which put in for four. To the best of my knowledge, four have been built in three of those four locations. Five or six locations got three pools. Kildare, foolishly, put in for two.

When the review was done in 2007, there was a comparison made with Northern Ireland and Scotland. Northern Ireland has one pool for every 32,000 of population, Scotland has one for every 15,000 of population and the aim in Ireland was to get one for every 58,000 of population.

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