Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 510: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism if his attention has been drawn to the fact that serious delays have occurred in the payment of national lottery grants under the sports capital programme due to delays in the general processing of the legal formalities and in particular in drafting, agreeing and completing the priorities agreements as between him and the relevant financial institutions; and if he will take steps to expedite the process. [34415/07]

Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)
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Under the sports capital programme, which is administered by my Department, funding is allocated to sporting and community organisations at local, regional and national level throughout the country. Since 1998 the Government has allocated a total of €568m in sports capital funding to 6,716 sports projects across the country. Additionally over €107m in capital funding has been provided towards the redevelopment of Croke Park. In 2007 alone €85m was allocated towards 935 separate projects.

The Deputy will appreciate that the scale of these investments warrants protection of the State's interests. Under the terms and conditions of the programme, an applicant (other than those solely seeking sports equipment) must provide evidence of freehold ownership of the property or evidence that they hold a lease of twenty-two years or more with at least fifteen years left to run. These are minimum requirements of the programme. These conditions are in place to ensure that the grantee is in a position to commit to the facility remaining in sporting use for at least fifteen years. Priority agreements are used to ensure that, where the club or organisation has debts to lending institutions, the Minister's investment and any other debts are listed in order of rank or priority.

In relation to expediting this process, I understand that the Chief State Solicitor's Office issues a pack to all solicitors acting on behalf of grantees. This pack includes a sample priority agreement. When the documents are returned they are checked by the Chief State Solicitor's Office and if in order the deeds can be sent to the Department for sealing. A proportionate amount of time is required for legal documents to be checked by the Chief State Solicitor's Office. If the documents are not in order the solicitors will be notified. There can be a number of delays in putting these agreements in place such as delays in the submission of fully completed paper work or difficulties in agreeing the order of priority of the club's debts.

My officials have a very good working relationship with the Chief State Solicitor's Office and together we are constantly trying to make improvements to the operation of the programme to make it more user friendly, while always conscious of the need to protect what are significant Government investments. If there are particular projects of which the Deputy is aware where a serious delay is occurring I would be happy to have the matter investigated and a response provided to the Deputy.