The government has announced a total funding of €173 million as part of the Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund, which was first created when Shane Ross was in the Sports seat in the cabinet.
Since then, there has been a lot of water under the bridge, and much work has gone into the most significant infrastructure projects that Irish sport can dream of delivering. And that’s just to get to a point where central government funding can be leveraged.
The €173 million figure is well up on the original estimate of €120 million, which was the number on the table when the applications closed on July 1st this year.
That was a big win for Minister of State Thomas Byrne and Minister Catherine Martin, who were both on the pitch at Dalymount Park today to announce the good news.
“This was an undertaking we made to create major facilities to back up the levels of sports and activity participation we are striving towards,” said Minister Martin, answering a question about whether the imminent general election guided the timing.
“It was not finalised until seven o’clock on Sunday,” added Minister of State Byrne, who also pointed to the inclusion of a “use it or lose it clause” and a reserve list of projects to be included “as future funding might become available,” as part of the negotiation with Minister Paschal Donohoe and the Department for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform.
The Use it or Lose it clause draws a line under the frustration felt by those who hold the purse strings over money not being spent on projects that promise funding but then cannot deliver on planning, alternative funding, or for a host of other reasons.
Few would ever go back and say sorry, but we just can’t make this work, so now the decision will be taken out of their hands and tested in the real world.
Each of the 35 projects that succeeded in this round will have its own individual timeline notified in writing. It will be different for each but if they do not succeed in getting it done, or at least started, others will jump up from the reserve list.
That reserve list is the glimmer of hope for the 55 projects that were not funded or mentioned in today’s announcement and that are feeling uncomfortable now in the midst of sporting AGM season that they cannot yet, or maybe ever, build the dream for their sport or in their county that some may have pinned their own credibility on.
In sport better than in almost any other field of endeavour, we should have a strong sense of the fact that some will win but not everyone. part of the mood of anxiety is that while we are assured that every valid application is on the reserve list for when that future funding becomes real, nobody knows yet where on the list they are. And it is a graded list; not all on it are equal, and the project that will be ranked number one will have a much stronger chance of success than a project ranked outside the top 20.
The reality is that the total value being looked for was €660 million, and that could never be satisfied. Spreading the pot too thin would have created to big a shortfall for big-ticket projects, so the decision was taken to give more to fewer than has become the norm in the old Capital Sports Grants, renamed last month with another €230 million in funding as the Community Sports Facility Fund.
Make no mistake—this is good news, and the additional investment will create transformational projects around the country.
Dalymount Park will be demolished and rebuilt as an 8,000-seat community stadium, and Sligo Rovers’ Showgrounds will similarly be upgraded into a modern, multi-sport stadium for the community’s benefit.
Tallaght Stadium gets €650,000 making up a trio of League of Ireland projects that bounce forward the narrative of the optimism around the domestic game.
Between them those three projects will get €41.75 million, a big win for the FAI and new CEO David Courell who was present alongside Bohenmians management and Dublin City Council officials at the launch today.
They will also be popping champagne in Cavan, with €19 million granted to develop the Cavan Regional Sports Campus, which will serve Gaelic Games, Hockey, Cricket, and more.
The themes of multi-sport and equality of access were strong today and appear prominent on the list.
New centres of excellence for Gaelic Games in Dublin, Wexford, Roscommon and Clare will help advance the cause of integration across the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association. A redevelopment of Morton Stadium by Athletics Ireland and DCU, as well as multi-sport facilities in Mayo, Limerick, Louth, and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, are among the 35 we will look at in greater detail tomorrow.
For the 55, there will be no headlines or celebrations, and there is no sense of how close they might be. But infrastructure is a long-term play and while the first round winners have been named, the hope remains for those not among them that they may yet be prominent on the reserve list and that sports winning ways in terms of health, mood and wellbeing will continue to move in the right direction.
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