James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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45. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht if she will outline the number of sport capital and equipment grant applications per county, in tabular form, spitting them into capital and equipment applications; if she will outline the applications per sport (i.e., GAA/soccer/rugby etc.); when she forecasts that her Department will have these assessed by; if there will be a process for appeals after the initial announcement of allocations; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [45801/23]

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 33 and 45 together.

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 benefited from sports capital funding since 1998, bringing the total allocations in that time to over €1.15 billion. The Programme for Government commits to continuing the SCEP and to prioritising investment in disadvantaged areas.

The 2023 round of the SCEP closed for applications on Friday 8 September. A preliminary examination of the submitted applications is now underway but it is clear that the Programme has again generated a very large number of applications and it is likely that the total number will exceed the previous record 3,106 applications submitted under the last (2020) round.

Work is now underway on finalising the "Scoring Assessment and Assessment Manual" for the 2023 round and I hope to have this published in the coming weeks. Simultaneously, I also plan to publish the full list of all applications received by county including the relevant sport type for each application received. Once these documents are published, the detailed assessment work can commence. In this regard, it is planned to assess the "Equipment-only" applications first with a view to announcing these grants in the coming months. Work will then commence on the assessment of the capital applications with the allocations likely to be announced later in 2024. As with all recent rounds of the Programme, an appeals mechanism will be available to any unsuccessful applicants.