Thomas Byrne (Meath East, 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 €1.15 billion. The Programme for Government commits to continuing the SCEP and to prioritising investment in disadvantaged areas.

The latest round of the SCEP (2023) closed for applications on Friday 8 September. The scope of the programme has been extended to include, for the first time, consideration of applications for renovation works on local authority swimming pools.

A preliminary examination of the submitted applications demonstrates that the Programme has again generated a very large number of applications, and it is evident that the total number will exceed the previous record of 3,106 applications submitted under the last (2020) round. However no application has been received in respect of the facility to which the Deputy refers.

Work is now underway on finalising the "Scoring Assessment and Assessment Manual" for the 2023 round and I hope to have this published shortly. 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 and announce these grants in the coming months. Work will then commence on assessing the capital applications with the allocations likely to be announced later in 2024.