Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 7 December 2017
197. Deputy Fergus O'Dowd asked the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if a reply will issue to correspondence received from a person (details supplied) regarding the sports grant allocation for County Louth; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [52492/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe Sports Capital Programme is the primary means of providing Government funding to sport and community organisations at local, regional and national level.
The 2017 round of the Sports Capital Programme closed for applications on the 24th February and by that date a record number of applications were received. When the programme was launched, it was envisaged that €30m would be available which would have made the allocation of grants particularly challenging. Following the conclusion of the budget discussions and in order to allow as many worthwhile projects as possible to receive some funding, significant extra resources were secured to allocate under this round.
The allocations in respect of all local applications were announced on Thursday 30th November. Full details of these allocations are available on my Department's website as is the scoring system and assessment procedures used for assessing applications. In this regard, the total amount available to allocate was first divided by county on a per capita basis. If a county could not use all of its per capita funding, any surplus funding was also redistributed to other counties on a per capita basis.
The exact amount allocated to each project was primarily based on the assessment score and the amount sought with some minimal rounding and adjustments to make as many projects as possible viable. In relation to the distribution of funding within any particular county, it should be noted that every valid local application has been allocated some funding. The programme is open to every local sporting organisation in every county and my Department has no role in determining the organisations in any county that may submit applications. Variations in the geographic and sporting distribution of funding within each county are to be expected.
In the case of County Louth, it should be noted that a total €1.6m was allocated to 42 projects with at least 8 of these being in the immediate Drogheda region.
