Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

I prefer the colder waters of the Atlantic off the coast of Galway, but I appreciate that schools and inhabitants need a local swimming pool. If I had not been keeping up to date with recent developments, Senator Cannon's speech left me in no doubt as to what side of the political spectrum he stands on, and I wish him the best on his transition. I thank the Senator for raising this matter and for giving me the opportunity to outline the position in relation to the Loughrea swimming pool proposal.

As Senators are aware, the local authority swimming pool programme is administered by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. The programme provides grant aid towards the capital costs of new public swimming pools or the refurbishment of existing public swimming pools provided by local authorities or other bodies where the application for capital funding is supported by the local authority. The current round of the programme closed to new applicants in July 2000. An application was received from Galway County Council for the Loughrea swimming pool before that closing date. The programme provides for maximum grant aid of €3.8 million per project.

There are four principal stages which must be undertaken by a local authority in developing a swimming pool project. These are a preliminary report including feasibility study, contract documents, tender stage and, finally, construction. Local authorities may not proceed to the next stage of a project until prior approval issues from the Department. Grant aid is formally allocated when the tender is approved. The Department's technical advisers, the Office of Public Works, which I have the honour to head, evaluates each stage.

The policy since 2000 has been to give priority to the completion of the 57 projects within the current round. Of these 57 projects, 43 have been completed and open to the public, three are under construction, all of which have been grant aided. Eleven other projects are at various stages of the programme. One is at tender stage, seven are at contract documents stage and three are at preliminary report stage.

Cumulative grant expenditure by the Department under the programme from 2000 to the end of April this year is €134.3 million and this grant aid has leveraged total investment of €383.5 million in public swimming pool facilities. Under the National Development Plan 2007-2013, €184 million has been allocated for the provision of public swimming pools under the local authority swimming pool programme, with €12.4 million provided in the Revised Estimates for 2009.

The Department has completed and published a value for money and policy review report of the local authority swimming pool programme. The report examined, among other things, how the programme has worked to date and what changes are required to ensure its effective and efficient delivery in the future. The report was published in 2008. The terms and conditions of any new round of the programme will be devised taking into account the recommendations of the report.

However, given the current budgetary constraints, it is not intended to launch a new round of the local authority swimming pool programme at this time. The matter will be reviewed again later this year.

The Department has been in discussions for some time with Galway County Council regarding the grant aiding of a swimming pool in Loughrea. The current proposal is that Galway County Council would supply a site to a local hotel developer who would construct the pool and in return would make the pool available to the public in Loughrea for an agreed number of hours per week and at entrance prices comparable to other public pools in Galway. As part of this plan, the council applied to the Department for a grant of €1.7 million from the local authority swimming pool programme towards the construction of the pool. Consideration of this proposal is at an advanced stage in the Department and my senior colleague, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Deputy Cullen, hopes to make an announcement about the project soon.

Again, I thank the Senator for raising this issue and assure him the Government will continue to build on its record of achievement in upgrading the stock of local public swimming pools in this country. The reply I gave does not justify the unqualified pessimism of the Senator's contribution.