Sport and Recreational Development
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-26
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Aidan Farrelly (SD), Kildare North

You can see it in the response - "The Department anticipates the project will pass approval gate 1 in the coming weeks" - but it is two years since the funding was secured. I will emphasise a couple of points. From the Sallins perspective, it is Kildare County Council running this. It is not a community group that may or may not have the time. It is the local authority running this project. How can the local authority not be trusted, having to put it through so many hoops or what you might want to call "gateways"? I think four or five times the Department came back to the council looking for more information. It is borderline ridiculous at this point. People in Kildare always seem to be on the suffering end whereby the housing is coming but so are the congestion, lack of services and slow pace with which important social infrastructure is delivered.
From a public accounts perspective, I really query whether Sallins is alone in this. The Minister of State said there may be another round in the coming months. The allocation is brilliant. This type of money and investment in our communities is brilliant but when you get past the headline and look at the ability to draw down that money, I am really concerned Sallins is not alone and there will be many other projects that have gone through a similar gateway fiasco, where they have the funds but cannot access them. That is a problem we need to consider collectively. I will bring the matter to the Committee of Public Accounts.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-26/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:04+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-26