John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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23. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the number of applications received by his Department this year under the sports capital grants scheme; if he will indicate the time scale for completion of the application process; when he expects to be in a position to confirm the applications that have been deemed successful; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27378/14]

Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I was delighted to be able to launch the 2014 round of the Sports Capital Programme earlier this year. €40 million is available for allocation. The 2,036 applications received under the 2014 Sports Capital Programme are currently being assessed by officials in my Department.  Every application will be assessed by one official and reviewed by another.  Given the number of applications received and the detail contained therein, this process takes a number of months to complete.  I hope to announce allocations in the next number of weeks.

Applications are first checked to ensure eligibility.  All eligible applications are initially assessed against five criteria, namely the likelihood of increasing participation and/or improving performance and sharing of facilities, level of socio-economic disadvantage in the area, technical merits of the project, level of own funding available and level of Sports Capital Programme funding received in the past. These criteria are designed to give higher scores to applications that increase participation, where facilities will be shared, that are from designated disadvantaged areas, that have not received substantial funding in the past and that are ready to be progressed as soon as possible.

In deciding the final allocations within each county, Minister Varadkar and I will have regard to a number of additional factors, including: ensuring a geographic spread of projects within each county; ensuring an appropriate spread of projects between rural and urban areas within each county; and ensuring that there is a spread of projects among different sports.