As I indicated previously, the commitment to a complete national audit of local sports facilities as outlined in the programme for Government will be addressed in the context of the development of a new long-term strategic plan for the provision of sports facilities.
The first step in the development has commenced with a review of the existing sports capital programme under the Department's expenditure review programme which is due to be completed by the summer. The purpose of this review is to establish what has been achieved under this programme over recent years with a view to identifying gaps in existing provisions and possible priorities for the future. Following this exercise an inter-agency steering group will be set up to devise a long-term strategy for the development of sports facilities and one of its first tasks will be to oversee the commencement of a national audit of local sports facilities.
This group, which will include members from Departments and State agencies, will consider the range of facilities to be included in the audit. It will be important before commencing the audit that a clear method of classifying facilities is established to ensure a consistent approach is adopted. This will help establish an accurate and comprehensive picture on the availability of sports and recreational facilities nation-wide.
As this will be an extensive and complex piece of work involving the obtaining of responses from a wide range of Departments, local authorities and State agencies, its completion will take a considerable length of time.