Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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74. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht her plans to increase funding available to local authorities for improving or creating swimming facilities given the increase in the use of such facilities. [4654/21]

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The Local Authority Swimming Pool Programme (LASPP) provides grant aid towards the capital costs of new swimming pools or the refurbishment of existing pools. To date 52 pools have been completed and three swimming pool projects (Lucan, Buncrana and Edenderry) remain in the programme. Exchequer support for any new swimming pools is now being provided under the Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF).

The LSSIF was launched in 2018 to provide Exchequer support for larger sports facility projects including swimming pools with at least €100m being made available over the period to 2027. Following a detailed assessment process, provisional allocations totalling €82.4m for 32 projects were announced in January last year. Of these 32 grants, 8 swimming pool projects have been awarded funding and all of these are local authority projects.

The evaluation procedures and guidelines for the LSSIF provide that once provisional allocations are announced, the successful projects will undergo a further process of due diligence. This process includes a further review of projects including economic appraisals and feasibility studies as appropriate to comply with the Public Spending Code. This work is continuing and the priority in the short term is on advancing the projects allocated funding last January. While it is not proposed to open the LSSIF for new applications at present, it is planned to review progress on all existing grants this year when the question of whether or not it would be appropriate to seek new applications will be considered.