Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. The departmental officials might have taken me up wrong. This was not in any way a proposal that there would be no new applications. It is with regard to applications that are validated but may not have scored as highly as other applications.If, as a club, we were not successful, we would have to reapply and go through the whole system again. Department officials would spend months going through the same application again. If we knew that we had a validated project and our funding application would be successful, we could be much better prepared and far more fundraising could be done. The officials in the Department will confirm that the reality is that they often have to grant extensions of a number of years to projects because many clubs are struggling to finish the projects due to a lower percentage in funding being awarded. My point is that we should award a higher percentage of funding, particularly during the Covid pandemic, to ensure that those projects are delivered. That will mean that the clubs can prepare themselves, get the funding put in place and know that the applications for future projects will be successful, so that they will not have to go through the process all over again with all the red tape involved.

Fair enough, updated bank statements, etc., will be needed. However, I would not place restrictions on applications being submitted for new projects. To be honest, we are creating more bureaucracy in a system that is already clogged up. There are over 3,000 applications in the system. That is five times over the limit of the fund. There will be a significant number of unsuccessful applications. If we are going to hit the targets that we have set as a Government, we need to put more funding into sport. I felt that this proposal was a way around the problem and a way to cut down on the bureaucracy and deliver the facilities.