All politicians want to be “the bearers of good news” ahead of the election, the sports minister said after a breakdown of funding for sports groups across Ireland was leaked.
The Large Scale Sport Infrastructure Fund will see 173 million euros in grants handed out to 35 sports projects across Ireland.
An assessment was made on whether to grant sports organisations funding based on population size, sustainability, and ensuring that similar access to facilities for both men and women were provided.
A “use it or lose it” clause has been added to the fund which will mean projects that do not progress over the agreed time period will lose their funding.
A reserve list of projects that have been approved for funding at a future date has also been announced.
The funding announcement was due to be made in October, but was unveiled instead on Monday.
Government TDs and other politicians shared the breakdown of funding online on Sunday, hours before the official announcement was made by Minister for Sport Catherine Martin and Minister of State for Sport and Physical Education Thomas Byrne in Dalymount Park, a stadium in Dublin which is to be redeveloped under the fund.
Asked about the leak, Mr Byrne said: “I was a bit surprised to see, particularly local councillors – and some were in my own area – announcing stuff because, quite frankly, I was on a sideline yesterday morning, on the phone to Minister Martin, on the phone to my officials, finalising this.
“This is finalised around, what, 6pm or 7pm yesterday evening. So there’s a lot of work ongoing on this.
“The only reason for the delay is that myself and Minister Martin were trying to negotiate more money.
“I think we succeeded in that. We had said initially publicly that we had 120 million.
“We’ve upped that to 175 million and we’re really keen to get as many projects as possible in and around the country.”
He said the additional funding was secured through negotiations with Public Expenditure Minister Paschal Donohoe, who he thanked for his work.
Mr Byrne added: “We negotiated as well that we have a reserve list, which is a government commitment, not a political commitment from parties, but a government commitment that as funding becomes available, these are projects that should be funded.
“Any valid applications who haven’t been allocated today are getting that commitment… but they’ll hear more from the department today and in the next few weeks.
“But look, it’s election season. People want to be sending out good news.”
He paid tribute to the volunteers in many sports associations who are behind planting the seed for the development of new facilities, saying: “Sometimes the credit has to be shared.”
Ms Martin echoed Mr Byrne’s comments that the announcement would have been made “weeks ago” but they were looking to secure more money and working on the reserve list.
She added: “The focus is on the good news stories for the 35 projects across the country, I suppose it is election week, and we can’t control what others do.
“I myself have completely respected the moratorium.
“What I would say is the amount of people that had the applications well exceeded 650 million euros for what was originally 120 million euros.
“So there were negotiations with them and Minister Donohoe in recent weeks as well to get the extra money.
“Myself and Minister Byrne have been in constant contact with each other, like 24/7, for the last week in relation to the allocation of that money.
“So we all have said we’d do this in the lifetime of the government, and I think it’s really important for the clubs and the organisations that they got that news.”