2026-05-07

10. Deputy Darren O'Rourke asked the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport if he plans to introduce a scheme to support sports clubs with the cost of purchasing land for playing pitches; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [31768/26]

I ask the Minister of State if he plans to introduce a scheme to support sports clubs with the cost of purchasing land for playing pitches. I could include buildings. My question is about providing clubs with a permanent home, whether playing pitches, boxing clubs and so on. It is a big issue for clubs across the State, particularly in urban centres and, in my case, in the commuter belt area, where the State does not own land.

The programme for Government commits to supporting local authorities in the acquisition of new lands for parks and playing pitches to help to build liveable communities. While neither of my Department's sports capital funding programmes, the community sport facilities fund, CSFF, or the large-scale sport infrastructure fund, LSSIF, provide for the acquisition of land, I would be supportive of local authority acquisition of lands for sport and recreation purposes. I have asked my officials to engage further with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage's officials in this regard and will liaise further with the Minister to assess steps that we can take to make real progress on this and on working with local authorities to identify and secure land. Once lands are acquired for sporting purposes, applications for capital investment, including equipment, on those lands can be supported by both the CSFF and the LSSIF. In line with previous rounds of the CSFF, a review of the current funding round is being undertaken and will be finalised shortly, in advance of it opening. My Department is aiming to announce the opening of applications over the course of this summer. Regarding the LSSIF, our current focus is on ensuring project delivery under the first two rounds and this process will inform any decisions regarding the timing of a future round.

Both the Minister and Minister of State have to be aware that this is a major issue. We are here for oral questions every six weeks or so. Every time we are here, this question comes up, particularly in the urban areas, Dublin and the wider commuter belt. The issue is that there are public parks and they are oversubscribed and, certainly in my area, that the State does not own land. The first question I asked when I was a county councillor elected to Meath County Council in 2014 was to show me the land that the council or the State owns in the area I was elected for. It is minuscule. Clubs are entirely dependent on negotiation or some sort of deal under the county development plan. They are renting and are sent from pillar to post. It is a major issue and there needs to be a solution for it. Whether it is the Minister's Department or the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, we need a solution for this.

We need to do more on this. Certainly, with the next round of the community sport facilities fund opening over the course of this summer, we want to try to do as much as we can in that short timeframe to encourage collaboration between schools, local authorities and clubs. We also have to look at how we can do more to identify land and communal grounds where municipal-type facilities can be developed. The programme for Government commits to that. My officials and I are engaging with the Department of housing to establish that. One recent example I saw was a GAA club where the local authority had required that an area the size of a football pitch be made available to the club free of charge as part of a zoning permission for a new housing estate beside that pitch. That is the type of joined-up thinking we need to see more of and that is the objective.

I could name any number of soccer clubs, including Stamullen FC, Killegland AFC and Kells Celtic FC, and boxing clubs which are in precarious situations. For example, they may be renting a corner of a gym. Many important sporting clubs and organisations have been without a permanent home for a long time and a solution needs to be provided. I have heard the Minister of State mention this developer-led approach where there can be negotiations and conditions on planning applications. I have also heard and have experience of working with educational facilities. It is very slow. An Teachta Seán Crowe was here before to address a specific roadblock. I have experience of people going for a sports capital grant on school facilities who did not get the okay and had to pull out of it. It is not a permanent solution but where it works, it works. In an awful lot of cases, it does not work. We need the State to step in and say it will build communities and support people doing it.

The key thing is that we have to make the biggest impact we can with what is available, and also look to grow what is available too. There are opportunities in many communities where there could be land available through schools and local authorities to collaborate with clubs. That is a message that we are getting out as strongly as we can with regard to this new round to encourage that collaboration, but there are also challenges regarding availability of land and it not being available. We are engaging across Departments about that to see how we can do more. Tools are available to local authorities, like I described, to be able to identify lands and to help to make them available, but we certainly need to make that more of a priority and for it to become more standard practice in how we step out and plan for new communities and make sure that their sporting and recreational needs are fully catered for.