Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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In October 2023 the Government established the Emergency Business Flooding and the Enhanced Emergency Business Flooding schemes as a contribution for damage caused by flooding in the period resulting from severe weather conditions. The schemes provided a one-off emergency humanitarian grant contribution towards the costs of returning business premises and community, voluntary, and sporting bodies to their pre-flood condition including the replacement of flooring, fixtures and fittings and damaged stock.

My Department has communicated that in the event that sports clubs and facilities cannot adequately benefit from the existing aid schemes and/or insurance payments, it will engage with sports clubs to ensure that facilities impacted by such severe weather are available again for sporting use.

My Department will make contact with the club referred to by the Deputy to consider the matter further.

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, 2023. A preliminary examination of the submitted applications demonstrates that the Programme has again generated a very large number of applications, including one from the organisation to which the Deputy refers. The total number of 3,210 applications exceeds the record number submitted under the last (2020) round.

The "Scoring System and Assessment Manual" for the 2023 round has been finalised and published along with a list of all applications received by county including the relevant sport type for each application received. These details can be accessed at www.gov.ie/en/publication/1c0f6-scep-2023-applications-received/. The necessary assessment work has commenced and 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 to be announced later.