Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Question 171: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism his views on lowering the matching funding threshold for sports clubs and organisations in CLÁR and RAPID areas from the 10% requirement to 5% under the sports capital programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41677/08]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, 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 over €725m in sports capital funding to over 7,400 sports projects across the country. This investment has transformed the sporting landscape of Ireland and has allowed the development of sports facilities across the length and breath of the country. These facilities have dramatically increased the opportunities for all people to engage in a wide variety of sports.

One of the stated aims and objectives of the sports capital programme is to prioritise the needs of disadvantaged areas in the provision of facilities. Since 2002, those areas that have been designated by Government for special support through the schemes administered by Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, i.e. RAPID, Local Drugs Task Force (LDTF) and CLÁR areas are treated as disadvantaged under the programme.

Projects identified as being located in areas designated as disadvantaged are targeted and prioritised in a number of ways during the assessment of applications. They are permitted to have a lower level of minimum own funding available towards their project and extra marks are also awarded to such projects during the assessment process by the application of socio-economic disadvantage criterion. Under the 2008 Sports Capital Programme, the level of own funding required by applicants from RAPID and Local Drugs Task Force areas was reduced to 10% from 20%. This is in line with the commitment in the Programme for Government. At this stage there are no plans to further reduce the level of own funding required.

Through the prioritisation of applications from disadvantaged areas, the Sports Capital Programme has invested over €146 million in designated disadvantaged areas. In turn, the arrangement where Sports Capital allocations in RAPID and CLÁR receive top-ups from the department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs has allowed further allocations of more than €22 million to be made.

I believe that these measures taken together give priority to applications from RAPID, CLÁR and LDTF areas and that the large scale investment in sports facilities in these areas is evidence of the Government's commitment to meeting the needs of designated disadvantaged areas.

For the Deputy's information, under the 2008 programme grants totalling over €16.4 million were allocated to 264 projects in designated disadvantaged areas. My colleague the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs has announced top-ups for qualifying grantees in RAPID areas of over €2m.