Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 15 February 2022
328. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media the changes she has made to the selection and awarding of sports capital grants in the latest round of funding; and when these grants will be announced. [7598/22]
View answerThe 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 €1.1 billion.
The 2020 round of the Programme closed for applications on 1st March 2021. By this closing date, 3,106 applications had been submitted seeking over €200m in funding. This is the highest number of applications ever received.
The scoring system and assessment procedures were finalised and published prior to assessment work commencing and all applications were assessed in accordance with these procedures. All of the improvements which were introduced for recent rounds of the Programme to make the process as user-friendly as possible were maintained for this round. In terms of the scoring system, the marking system was amended to give even greater weighting towards projects aimed at improving female participation and disadvantaged groups. In terms of targeting disadvantaged areas, the level of disadvantage in the catchment area of clubs rather than just the actual site location was also considered for the first time. The full scoring system can be viewed at the following link:- www.sportscapitalprogramme.ie/
Approximately one thousand of the submitted applications were for 'equipment-only' projects. These applications were assessed first and grants with a total value of €16.6m were announced on 6 August 2021. The remaining capital applications were then assessed and 1,865 individual grant offers with a total value of over €143.8m were announced on Friday 11 February. A further €6.2m has been kept in reserve for any successful appeals lodged by unsuccessful applicants meaning that a record €150m package has been made available. Full details of all allocations can be found at the following link:- www.gov.ie/en/collection/471ed5-sports-capital-allocations/
My Department will be in contact with all applicants in shortly and any unsuccessful applicants will have the opportunity to appeal the Department's decision.
