My Department operates two schemes to assist sports clubs and organisations to develop new sports facilities.
Under the Sports Capital Programme, grants of €750,000 in 2007 (of which a balance of €59,344 remains) and €500,000 in 2008 (of which a balance of €357,548 remains) were made available for the development of a new stadium as referenced by the Deputy. In July 2018 an additional allocation of a maximum of €304,000 was awarded for the appointment of design consultants to develop detailed plans for Phase 1 of the new stadium including the completion of the partially built stand, pitch, floodlighting and necessary ground works. An amount of €181,632 has been paid out on foot of this design work.
The Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund (LSSIF) was launched in 2018 to provide Exchequer support for larger sports facility projects with at least €100 million being made available over the period to 2027.
The first allocations under the LSSIF were announced in January 2020 and thus far, approximately €86.4 million has been awarded to 33 different proposals. The LSSIF grants announced to date include a provisional allocation of €3,991,009 for the construction of the new facility to which the Deputy refers. None of this LSSIF allocation has been drawn down to date.