Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 7 December 2023
212. Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan asked the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media to provide a comprehensive overview of funding stream available to sports clubs for capital, current and ad hoc expenditure; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [54391/23]
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 €1.15 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. A preliminary examination of the submitted applications demonstrates that the Programme has again generated a very large number of applications and it is evident that the total number will exceed the previous record of 3,106 applications submitted under the last (2020) round.
Work is now underway on finalising the "Scoring Assessment and Assessment Manual" for the 2023 round and I hope to have this published shortly. Simultaneously, I also plan to publish the full list of all applications received by county including the relevant sport type for each application received. Once these documents are published, the detailed assessment work can commence. In this regard, 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 likely to be announced later in 2024.
Separately, the National Sports Policy, which was published in 2018, provided for the establishment of a Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF). The first call for proposals under the LSSIF closed in 2019 with applications confined to local authorities and National Governing Bodies (NGBs) of Sport. All applications were assessed in accordance with the published Evaluation Procedures and Guidelines and the first allocations were announced in January 2020.
Minister Martin and I recently announced additional funding amounts to a total of €37.6 million, with 27 existing LSSIF projects benefitting, bringing the total awarded to date to Large Scale Sport Infrastructure funded projects to €124 million. The additional funding for projects is being provided, in response to delays experienced by grantees arising from the pandemic and construction inflation, following engagement with the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform.
It was also confirmed recently that a new round of the Large-Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund will open for applications in the first half of 2024, with the dates, terms and conditions to be published on the Department’s website in due course.
