Sports Funding
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-20
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Ryan O'Meara (FF), Tipperary North

I thank the Minister of State. From my own experience of dealing with clubs during the last round, I trust that the bureaucratic nature of it is something that has been addressed ahead of the next round opening. I fully understand we are dealing with public moneys here and they have to be spent correctly, but we are also dealing with voluntary organisations that are doing incredible work, often in long-term development plans for their clubs. The level of paperwork and detail they have to go into sometimes can be a bit excessive. Examples that I would give come from the last round when clubs went to appeal. It was announced some time around March 2025 and appeals were decided by September. A lot of issues around appeals the last time had to do with the appendices to the grant applications being slightly wrong, just something being slightly inaccurate in them. The information provided by the club had already answered the question, but they had not filled in the exact piece of paperwork to answer the question. They might have sent in a title document or something without signing that piece of paper. It is very important that we not deal with that level of hurdle for voluntary clubs.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-20