Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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327. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if she will provide a schedule of the totality of grant-aid and or financial assistance provided to organisations in respect of the hosting of a tournament (details supplied). [7559/22]

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The Government had committed to covering the costs of the national promotion programme, security and a free transport programme for EURO 2020 in Dublin. At the time of the cancellation of the matches due to COVID-19, expenditure on the free transport programme and security had not yet taken place and would have been focused around the tournament.

Expenditure totalling €865,809. was incurred on elements of the national promotion programme in the lead up to the planned tournament as set out below:

- A grant of €751,384 was paid in instalments between 2018 and 2021 to the Football Association of Ireland by Fáilte Ireland in respect of the National Football Exhibition.

- A grant of €560,091 was allocated to Dublin City Council by Fáilte Ireland for a range of national promotion programme projects. However, of this allocation, a total of €114,425 was ultimately drawn down by Dublin City Council between 2020 and 2021 in two instalments Ireland in respect of promotional events including the 2019 New Year Festival, the Dublin International Film Festival, initial design work for dressing of railway stations and work on a Saint Patrick’s Festival pageant for the 2020 parade (which was cancelled due to Covid-19). The balance of the grant was not drawn down.

Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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328. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the changes she has made to the selection and awarding of sports capital grants in the latest round of funding; and when these grants will be announced. [7598/22]

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 €1.1 billion.

The 2020 round of the Programme closed for applications on 1st 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. All of the improvements which were introduced for recent rounds of the Programme to make the process as user-friendly as possible were maintained for this round. In terms of the scoring system, the marking system was amended to give even greater weighting towards projects aimed at improving female participation and disadvantaged groups. In terms of targeting disadvantaged areas, the level of disadvantage in the catchment area of clubs rather than just the actual site location was also considered for the first time. The full scoring system can be viewed at the following link:- www.sportscapitalprogramme.ie/

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. The remaining capital applications were then assessed and 1,865 individual grant offers with a total value of over €143.8m were announced on Friday 11 February. A further €6.2m has been kept in reserve for any successful appeals lodged by unsuccessful applicants meaning that a record €150m package has been made available. Full details of all allocations can be found at the following link:- www.gov.ie/en/collection/471ed5-sports-capital-allocations/

My Department will be in contact with all applicants in shortly and any unsuccessful applicants will have the opportunity to appeal the Department's decision.