Departmental Funding Dail Éireann — 2026-03-03 ============================================================ Charlie McConalogue (FF), Donegal I propose to take Questions Nos. 140 and 180 together. I thank the Deputy. The LSSIF was established, as the Deputy knows, to provide Exchequer support for larger sports facility projects and the cumulative investment since 2020 is €297 million across 68 projects. While the LSSIF is closed to applications at present, our focus is on ensuring that project delivery under the first two rounds of the LSSIF is followed through on. This process will inform any decisions regarding the timing of a future round, but I am committed to ensuring sustained investment in sports facilities to meet our ambitious goals for sports participation nationwide. The LSSIF focuses on larger initiatives, particularly those related to high-performance sport, major spectator events and community-accessible facilities. The key aims of the LSSIF are to increase active participation in sport and the quality of that participation, to increase the quantum and quality of social participation in sport, to improve high performance in sport and to increase active participation. I am pleased to confirm that nine LSSIF projects, including the redevelopments of St. Conleth's Stadium in Kildare and Dexcom Stadium in Galway, are complete. I joined the Deputy at the Munster Rugby centre of excellence in Cork, which is a wonderful facility that was strongly supported under this round of funding. I know from talking to him that day that the Deputy has plans and objectives for this fund, going forward. From the Government point of view, there will be one more round. The national development plan commits to that round. It will be towards the latter part of this Government's term when that new round opens. As I said, the specific timing of that will depend on the progress made with the existing fund and applications. For the next couple of years, our focus will be on ensuring those projects move. Some of them have been much slower than they should have been and we want them to be delivered before we move towards opening a new round for new applications to come forward. That is, we expect, two to three years away. --- 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/dail/2026-03-03/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:02+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-03