Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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Question 21: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism the proportion of applications received under the sports capital programme that were related to schools and colleges at primary, second, third and further education levels. [2486/06]

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 and, in certain circumstances, schools and colleges, throughout the country. Projects must be of a capital nature and be directly related to the provision of sporting and physical recreation facilities. This means that the project must involve: improving or building an asset; or purchasing non-personal sports equipment that will be used for at least five years.

Applications to the programme from primary and post-primary schools and colleges must be made jointly with local sports clubs or community groups and must: demonstrate a clear need for the proposed sports facility in the area as formally agreed with other local groups and-or the local authority; demonstrate how the proposed facility will meet that need; and demonstrate that the local community will have significant access to the proposed facility when it is not being used by the school or college itself. In this regard, the significant access is a requirement for a minimum of at least 30 hours a week throughout the year.

The sports capital programme is administered on an annual basis. The deadline for receipt of applications under the 2006 programme was at close of business on Friday last, 20 January, by which time over 1,300 applications were received. Given that large volume of applications and the complexity of processing and evaluating the information required, it is not possible at this very early stage to provide a breakdown of applications by type of applicant or to say how many were related to schools and colleges.

However, for the Deputy's information and as a point of reference, under the 2005 sports capital programme, 30 out of 1,362, or 2.2%, of the applications received for that programme were projects from schools and colleges, while a further nine applications were received from third level institutions.