Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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201. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if she will consider permitting sports clubs that missed a deadline to upload documentation relating to their Sports Capital and Equipment Programme application permission to do so now in view of the fact that during much of 2021 due to public health guidelines and restrictive measures imposed made it exceptionally difficult to construct and arrange applications in advance of the deadline. [2713/22]

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The Sports Capital and Equipment Programme (SCEP) is the primary vehicle for Government support for the development of sports and recreation facilities and the purchase of non-personal sports equipment throughout the country.  Over 13,000 projects have now benefited from sports capital funding since 1998, bringing the total allocations in that time to over €1 billion. 

On 30 November 2020, Minister Martin and I announced that a new round of the Programme was opening with at least €40 million available to allocate. The original closing date for applications was 12 February 2021 but, in view of difficulties that some applicants were encountering as a result of Covid restrictions, this deadline was extended until 1 March 2021.  By this closing date, 3,106 applications had been submitted seeking over €200m in funding.  This is the highest number of applications ever received.

The scoring system and assessment procedures were finalised and published prior to assessment work commencing and all applications were assessed in accordance with these procedures. 

Approximately one thousand of the submitted applications were for 'equipment-only' projects. These applications were assessed first and grants with a total value of €16.6m were announced on 6 August 2021.

In relation to the remaining capital SCEP applications, the initial assessment of all applications was completed last week. In accordance with our objective of making the whole application process as user-friendly as possible, applicants who did not submit correct applications were given a two week period to submit corrected documentation. When assessing such a high volume of applications, the consistent application of the terms and conditions of the SCEP is paramount to delivering the Programme in a reasonable timeframe. It should be noted that this is only the second iteration of the Programme where applicants have been given the chance to correct their applications. Previously such applications were simply deemed invalid. 

I am committed to having the final list of successful grants announced as soon as possible. While revised documentation is not being accepted after the deadline date, I intend to give all unsuccessful applicants the opportunity to appeal the Department’s decision. Information on how to submit an appeal will be issued to all applicants when the grants are announced. An announcement on the timing of a new round of the Programme will be made as soon as the appeals process is complete.