Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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1236. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the number of sports capital grant applications received in 2016 and 2017; the number for those years that were declined; the number of applicants contacted prior to a decision on the grant to provide further information or offer clarity in respect of their application; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [15417/18]

Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael)
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The Sports Capital Programme is the Government's primary vehicle for supporting the development of sports facilities and the purchase of non-personal sports equipment throughout the country.

There was no round of the Sports Capital Programme (SCP) in 2016. Under the 2017 round of the Programme, 2,320 applications were submitted with 7 of these subsequently withdrawn by applicants. 

Applicants were only contacted by the Department during the assessment process for one of two  reasons:  Firstly where the online system had not forced them to upload a mandatory document or secondly, where they were party to a joint application and had also made an application in their own right. In these latter cases, the organisation was asked which application it wished to have considered (under the terms of the SCP, organisations such as sports clubs and community groups are only allowed to have one application considered). 

Following the conclusion of the assessment process, all applicants were contacted with details of the outcome of the assessment of their application, including details of why applications were deemed invalid. A total of 663 applications were deemed either invalid or partially invalid. In the case of these invalid applications, all organisations were invited to appeal the decision if they believed an error was made in deeming their application invalid. 149 such appeals were submitted and of these 35 were upheld. 

Including these successful appeals, a total of 1,837 of the applications under the 2017 round of the programme received a grant offer. 

A review of the 2017 round of the programme is now being finalised and will be published on my Department's website (www.dttas.ie) in the very near future.