Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his comments. I have mentioned already the funding the Government gave the Football Association of Ireland in 2020 and it has looked at that over the past number of years. There was a real danger that the FAI would become inoperable if that funding was not provided at the time. The main funding levers through which the Government operates for infrastructure are through the sports capital and equipment programme and the large-scale sports infrastructure fund. The last large-scale sports infrastructure fund was announced in 2020 and there are top-ups this year. Only two applications were received from the FAI and we will be looking for announcing another round of applications for that in the coming weeks. I strongly encourage football and the FAI to get involved in that to ensure that they are able to do that, together with local authorities.

Also through the sports capital and equipment fund last year, we put a special emphasis on football. We spoke to the FAI before the sports capital programme started and, to be fair to the FAI, it went out on the ground encouraging its clubs to apply for funding under the programme. The number of applications from football is up, and is up as an overall percentage of the pot as well. I think that football has real potential to do well in this current round that is being looked at at the minute.

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