Sports Facilities Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-07 ============================================================ Charlie McConalogue (FF), Donegal I thank the Senator for raising and the Cathaoirleach for selecting this Commencement matter. Senator Gallagher and I have discussed it on many occasions. I am thankfully a Donegal man. The Senator has had two bites of the cherry in recent years representing Monaghan so well. We have discussed the place of Clones in Ulster and Monaghan football, as the sporting heart of Monaghan and of Ulster and the need for what has been a great facility over the years to continue to evolve and be redeveloped. This is a good opportunity to be able to discuss it. I plan to outline the potential different funding options so the work Monaghan is putting plans together for can be stepped out. As the Senator will be aware, the programme for Government commits to maintaining sports funding so that, collectively, we can get more people participating in all levels of sport. The Department operates two capital funding programmes for sport, namely the community sport facilities fund, CSFF, and the large-scale sport infrastructure fund, LSSIF. The CSFF provides grants to assist in the development or refurbishment of sports facilities and the provision of sports equipment. More than €250 million was allocated in the most recent round announced in 2024 to more than 3,000 clubs. Priorities around the development of individual facilities are primarily a matter for individual sporting organisations applying for funding. The Senator mentioned the redevelopment of Casement Park, which is a strong commitment of the Government and has been supported with funding under the shared island fund. The Government, the Northern Ireland Executive, the GAA and the UK Government have made significant funding commitments to support the delivery of a redeveloped Casement Park. Officials from my Department, the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland and the GAA met recently to discuss how best to move forward the project. I understand the GAA has stated it is currently reviewing options for a phased delivery of the new stadium following the recent completion of pre-enabling works. St. Tiernach’s Park in Clones has been allocated €870,154 over the last three rounds of the CSFF. In addition, the Department of Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht recently provided grant funding of more than €660,000 towards the development of a major regeneration project centred around St. Tiernach’s Park. In line with previous rounds of the community sports facilities fund, I have asked my Department to prepare for a further round. We will be opening that shortly, and it will be open over the summer. There will be an opportunity there for all clubs, including St. Tiernach's, to consider how the fund might support any works it has planned. The scale of the community sports facilities fund is small compared with the wider plans of Monaghan GAA and the county council for St. Tiernach's Park. In that light, the large scale sports infrastructure fund would be more in line with the type and scale of plans that would be necessary for the redevelopment of St. Tiernach's Park. We have so far had two rounds of the large scale infrastructure fund since its establishment. There were announcements in 2020 and again in 2024. We will have one round of the large-scale infrastructure fund during the course of the lifetime of this Government, as provided for in the national development plan. The outline expectation is for the large-scale infrastructure fund to open in early 2028, with announcements to follow later that year. That is what we are expecting for the next round, which I know will be of significant interest for funding the plans that are there and their being considered during a round of that funding pot. We can all agree on the importance of keeping St. Tiernach's and Clones at the heart of football and sport in Ulster and the country, and making sure that the ground is of a standard that is suitable for the future in the same way as it has served the needs of the GAA and sport so well in the years and decades until now. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-07