Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with Deputy Dooley. The Minister for Finance takes that money in and there is no such thing as national lottery money any more. Like every other Department we must go to the Department of Finance and fight for our budget. Deputy Dooley is correct. That is why the national lottery was established. It is being sold, but I hope we receive a substantial amount of that money for sports capital funding. We do not know yet what funding we will receive for sports capital projects. We will determine that with the Estimates in the next number of weeks.

We received 2,171 applications and we had €26 million for local schemes and €5 million for regional schemes, so we were never going to satisfy everybody. The one thing I am proud of is that for the first time ever we did it on a pro rata basis so that every county got its fair share of this funding. Deputy McHugh is correct; however, I do not see a role for local authorities. I would love if every Deputy could come in and pick what they wanted, but that will not happen.

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