Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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34. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport of the 2,036 applications for funding under the 2014 sports capital grant programme, if he will outline per county in tabular form, the number that have been deemed invalid and the reason for same. [27089/14]

Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The 2,036 applications received under the 2014 Sports Capital Programme are currently being assessed by officials in my Department.  Every application is 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.

The main reasons applications are deemed invalid include failure to comply with the Department's requirements in relation to title/access, planning permission, own funding, quotations and sporting content. At the end of the process we will be writing to those organisations who are deemed invalid indicating specifically why their applications were deemed invalid.

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.