Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 17 February 2022
208. Deputy Paul Kehoe asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media the reason that a club (details supplied) was unsuccessful in its application for sports capital funding; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8952/22]
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 Programme for Government commits to continuing the SCEP and to prioritising investment in disadvantaged areas.
The 2020 round of the Programme closed for applications on 1 March 2021. By this 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. This included giving applicants a second chance to submit corrected documentation. The full scoring system and assessment procedures 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.
My Department will be in touch directly with all applicants to notify them of the outcome of their applications. Where relevant, this will include details of why applications were deemed invalid. All such unsuccessful applicants, including the organisation referred to by the Deputy, will have the opportunity to appeal the Department's decision and full details of the appeals procedure will issue to these clubs shortly.
