The sports capital programme, which is administered by my Department, allocates funding to sporting and community organisations at local, regional and national level throughout the country. The programme is advertised on an annual basis.
I have no plans to transfer responsibility for the allocation of this funding to an independent authority. I believe that the current arrangements for administering the sports capital programme, which have been applied by successive governments over many years, have been extremely successful in ensuring that the programme is responsive to local needs.
It is entirely appropriate that the Minister for Sport should be in a position to use this important instrument of sporting policy to achieve objectives such as supporting projects of particular local or regional significance or encouraging the development of as many sports as possible. Over the period 1998-2006 inclusive, €483 million has been allocated in sports capital funding in 5,781 projects. This massive investment in the creation of a sporting infrastructure is now yielding benefits both in terms of local community developments and increased participation in sport. The scheme is administered in accordance with pre-determined eligibility criteria, all of which must be satisfied before projects may access funding allocated to them.
I would remind the Deputy that as Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, I am directly accountable to Dáil Éireann for the operation of the sports capital programme. This accountability is ongoing and finds expression, for example, through parliamentary questions, adjournment debates, estimates debates and engagement with Dáil Committees. This is a feature which would be notably absent were the administration of the sports capital programme to be made the responsibility of an independent board. Apart from the obvious issue of how one determines ‘independence', experience elsewhere has shown that decisions by independent boards do not always receive universal acceptance. Where a grant scheme attracts a level of applications well in excess of available funding, as is the case with the sports capital programme, unsuccessful applicants will always experience an understandable sense of disappointment whatever the decision-making process.