The Federation were pleased to host representatives of the Department of Tourism, Transport and Sport at a sold out briefing session on the 22nd of January. The topic of the day was the Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Fund which is making €100million available for large scale projects over the next 10 years. The fund is accepting applications from National Governing Bodies and Local Sports Partnerships between now and April 17th 2019.
The Federation was delighted to welcome a full house to the National Sports Campus Conference Centre for the briefing. Governing bodies, local sports partnerships and county councils all attended and had the opportunity to seek clarity around the application process and ask any burning questions of the department’s representatives.
Noel Sheehan outlined the reasons behind the establishment of the fund and its relationship to the Sports Capital Programme which has been a huge success at local and regional level.
The new fund was created in order to provide the same level of access and transparency around projects where the minimum Government investment would be €300,000 up to a maximum of €30 million on projects of up to €100 million.
Donal Hanigan then went through the specifics of the fund including details on the required ownership of the land and the ability for the government to place a charge on that land as part of the funding transaction.
Multi-sport use and collaboration were once more to the fore in terms of how each of the projects would be assessed and there was a strong sense that producing new facilities that would merely replicate existing ones would not be a favoured approach.
The objectives of the fund are aligned to those of the National Sports Policy. These include increasing active and social participation in sport and the quality of that participation as well as to improve high-performance levels and to increase access to sport for those with disability.
The amount of money on offer has been pitched at a minimum of €100 million over the coming years but as projects came forward that could yet rise in line with further commitments under the Ireland 2040 Capital investment programme.
There are two streams of funding, the first towards covering from design to tender and the second towards construction.
While Universities and third level colleges are not specifically included in the round, proposals which may incorporate them in partnership with National Governing Bodies and Local authorities will be considered.
For further information on the fund and application process please see here http://www.dttas.ie/sport/english/large-scale-sport-infrastructure-fund-lssif