Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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53. To ask the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht the amount of capital funding Sport Ireland has put into a facility (details supplied) in 2023 and to date in 2024; and the nature of capital works projects carried out, in tabular form. [26330/24]

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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Sport Ireland does not provide capital funding to developments outside the national sports campus.

My Department operates two capital funding programmes for sport, namely the Sports Capital and Equipment Programme (SCEP) and the Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF). The 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. The LSSIF provides support for larger sports facility projects where the Exchequer investment would be greater than the maximum amount available under the SCEP. The LSSIF is currently open for applications with a deadline of 1 July 2024.

No capital funding has been provided from either fund to the facility referred to in the question, which now comes under the remit of a third level institution, in 2023 or to date in 2024.

The Government is investing significantly in Irish athletics. Since 2019, Sport Ireland has provided over €19 million in funding to Athletics Ireland. This includes €6.5 million in core funding, €5.4 million in high performance funding, €2.4 million to individual athletes and over €500,000 in Women in Sport funding.

Under the Sports Capital and Equipment Programme a total of €3.9 million was allocated to athletics under the 2020 programme. The current, 2023, round of the programme has seen €1.6 million allocated in equipment-only funding to athletics applications and assessments are currently underway in relation to the capital funding element of the 2023 programme. Under the Large Scale Sport infrastructure Fund (LSSIF) a total of €24,019,701 has been allocated to athletics projects under the first round of the fund; the second funding round is currently open and I anticipate that athletics will again feature strongly under this new round which closes on 1 July.