Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)
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Question 264: To ask the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism if she intends to launch a sports capital programme for 2011; the reasons there has been no programme since 2008; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16419/10]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Under the Sports Capital Programme, which is administered by my Department, and part funded from the proceeds of the National Lottery, funding is allocated to sporting and community organisations at local, regional and national level throughout the country. While no new call for applications for funding has been made since 2008 over 1,550 payments were made in 2009 with a total value of more than €58.7m. For 2010 a provision of €48m has been made to cover the payment of grants allocated under earlier rounds of the programme.

At the start of 2010 there were some 1,900 outstanding grants with a total value of just over €117m. Given the current budgetary situation and the high level of outstanding commitments it was considered prudent to pause prior to announcing the next round of the Programme and no date has been set for the next round of the Programme.