Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

289. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the amount of funding that has been allocated for the installation of a swimming pool by Kildare County Council at the Maynooth University campus. [44904/20]

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

No funding has been allocated by my Department for the project referred to by the Deputy.

The Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF) was launched in 2018 to provide Exchequer support for larger sports facility projects including swimming pools with €100m being made available over the period to 2027.   

An application was received from Kildare County Council for design funding towards a new swimming pool at the Maynooth campus with €1m sought. All applications under the LSSIF were assessed in accordance with the published scoring criteria and provisional allocations totalling €82.4m for 32 projects were announced last year.  Of these 32 grants, 8 swimming pool projects were awarded funding.

The total funding applied for under the scheme significantly exceeded the amount available to allocate and the swimming pool project in Maynooth did not score sufficiently highly to be awarded a grant under this set of allocations.  All unsuccessful applicants were however, given the opportunity to appeal the Department’s decision if it was felt than an error was made in the assessment process and an appeal in this regard was received from Kildare County Council. All appeals have now been assessed by officials who were not involved in the initial assessment process and a final decision on the LSSIF appeals will be made shortly. While it is not proposed to open the LSSIF for new applications at present, I have asked my officials to review progress on existing grants this year when the question of whether it would be appropriate to seek new applications or award additional grants will be considered.