Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)
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Question 393: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism the reason County Kildare only received 13.5% of grants sought under the 2005 sports capital programme when other counties such as Kilkenny received 42%, Kerry 20%, Cork 23%, Limerick 17% and Sligo 25%; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32524/05]

John O'Donoghue (Kerry South, Fianna Fail)
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The national lottery funded sports capital programme, which is administered by my Department, allocates funding to sporting and community organisations at local, regional and national level throughout the country. The programme is advertised on an annual basis.

All applications received under the programme are assessed on an individual basis by officials in the sports unit of my Department in accordance with a detailed set of assessment criteria as specified in the guidelines, terms and conditions that accompany the application form for the programme. Following the assessment process, each application receives a score, which gives its order of priority within its own county.

When assessing individual applications, regard is had to the amount of funding being sought by each applicant for their project as well as other factors such as the population levels in each county, the amount of funding available for allocation, the existing level of facilities in an area, the quality of the applications received, and the strategic positioning of major facilities that may be required. Every effort is also made to achieve a balanced geographical spread of funds throughout the country while also affording priority to projects in areas of social and economic disadvantage.

Under the sport capital programme a total of €385.9 million has been allocated to 4,904 projects since 1998, of which €23.4 million has been allocated to 218 projects in County Kildare. There is no doubt that all counties have benefited tremendously from this greatly increased funding.