Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 112: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism if his attention has been drawn to the concerns relating to an unfair allocation of national lottery funding under the sports capital grants; and if he has any proposals in this regard. [37219/09]

Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 122: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism the basis on which decisions have been made in the allocation of national lottery funding for sports capital grants; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37218/09]

Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 112 and 122 together.

All applications under the Sports Capital Programme are assessed according to the Programme's published assessment criteria. These criteria, which are issued with application forms, can be summarised as follows:

the extent to which projects increase active participation and result in improved standards of sport especially in disadvantaged areas;

the financial viability of the project; and

the need to achieve an equitable spread geographically and across different sports and community groups.

In addition, projects identified as being located in areas designated as disadvantaged, or as serving disadvantaged areas, are targeted and prioritised. A scoring system is employed which allocates marks to each application consistent with the extent to which it meets the assessment criteria. Different weighting is attached to the various criteria depending on their importance.

The applications are divided into two categories for assessment - local and non-local i.e. national, regional and municipal-multisport. For local projects, the level of funding to each county is on the basis of a pro-rata distribution of the available funding on the basis of the population as set out in the most recent census of population. All local applications from an individual county are assessed by one member of staff to ensure a consistent approach to applications from the county concerned. These assessments are then subject to quality proofing by more senior officers to the officer which conducted the initial assessment. Applications which meet the basic qualifying conditions each receive a score, which decides their order of priority within their own county.

In cases where a sufficient number of eligible projects is not received from a county, any excess funding is typically distributed pro-rata among counties that have an excess of eligible projects. Non-local projects are assessed on additional criteria such as the location of the proposed facility within the network of national, regional, municipal facilities and linkages with the Department's Local Authority Swimming Pools Programme. Following completion of the assessment process, a list of recommended allocations is submitted to the Minister for approval.

Both the assessment of applications and the payment of allocations under the Sports Capital Programme is subject to inspection by my Department's internal audit section and by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Any issues brought to the attention of the Department in relation to applications made under the Sports Capital Programme are closely scrutinised to ensure that they comply with the terms and conditions of the Programme.