During the last Government's term of office, £3 million per year was put into swimming pools. Our research showed that 450,000 people use swimming facilities and, consequently, I approached the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, and received £45 million to put into local authority pools over the next three years. That amounts to £15 million per year. We are responding to the need.
The Limerick pool would not have been capable of holding the Special Olympics swimming events. The Special Olympics must have venues approximate to each other because of the potential language problems arising from the 160 countries participating. All the individual competition venues had to be close to each other, particularly those for swimming. These athletes have certain medical problems which also must be catered for. From that point of view, the competition pool at Limerick, even if it was of competition size, would have been of no value to the special Olympians. We decided that Dublin would be the base for the Special Olympics in 2003 and would need a pool as well.