Carrying out an effective and comprehensive national audit of local facilities is a major undertaking in terms of complexity and time. For instance, the Sports Council in Northern Ireland is just embarking on a similar exercise and is allowing a period of five years to complete the task. It is a smaller geographical area with a smaller population and an administration where local authorities have been directly involved in the provision of sport and leisure for almost 100 years.
The first step would be to appoint a steering group to oversee the development of a long-term strategy for sports facility provision which, in turn, will commence the planning of the audit. I understand a number of local authorities have already become involved in carrying out an inventory of sports facilities in their areas and the Department will closely examine the methodology, standards and parameters used by them. It is not clear yet how successful, comprehensive or accurate these local services are proving to be. I agree with the Deputy that we do not really know precisely what facilities are available at this point. However, over the past five years 2,900 projects have been approved and the total spend has been of the order of €219 million. The sports capital programme for next year has a provision in the region of €60 million.
There is no point pretending an audit of this nature will be easy or will be done in a brief period. We must look at the question of the type of facilities we have, their usage and location. We must then seek out deficiencies or lacunae which exist and seek to fill them where possible. If it is to take up to five years to complete a study of this magnitude in Northern Ireland, the probability is that it will take even longer here.
