2026-01-20

144. Deputy Shane Moynihan asked the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport the engagement his Department has had with Dublin local authorities regarding their experience of acquiring land for the development of new playing pitches; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4078/26]

The purpose of this question is to understand the level and nature of the engagement the Minister of State's Department has had with Dublin's local authorities with regard to their experience in acquiring land for new playing pitches. As he knows, access to pitches is a significant pressure point across Dublin, particularly in the faster-growing communities like Lucan, Clondalkin and Saggart, and the advent of new towns like Clonburris and Adamstown. Local authorities need that national support to secure much-needed playing facilities for those new populations.

I thank the Deputy for raising this. The programme for Government commits to supporting local authorities in the acquisition of new lands for parks and playing pitches to help build liveable communities. While neither of my Department's sports capital funding programmes - the community sport facilities fund, CSFF, and the large scale sport infrastructure fund, LSSIF - provide for the acquisition of land, I am supportive of any funding proposal to enable local authorities to acquire lands for sport and recreation purposes. I have not had engagement with local authorities directly on this issue, but I am conscious of the pressure on playing space availability in urban areas in particular. Funding to local authorities to improve the amenity of communities is primarily a matter for the Department of housing and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and I intend to engage with him regarding the programme for Government commitment to ensure we can move it forward. Once lands are acquired for sporting purposes, applications for capital investment, including equipment, on those lands can be supported via the community sports facilities fund as well as the large-scale sports infrastructure fund. Over a quarter of a billion euro was allocated to 3,048 community sports clubs and facilities in 2024 from the 2023 round of the CSFF, representing the largest ever investment in sports facilities in communities across Ireland. I have asked my Department to prepare for a further round of the CSFF in 2026. In 2024, the second round of LSSIF received an unprecedented demand for funding. On 4 November 2024, grants totalling €173 million were awarded to 35 projects, and my current focus is on ensuring project delivery under the first two rounds of the LSSIF. No decisions have been taken regarding the next round of the LSSIF as of yet.

As I have said and the Minister of State has acknowledged, Dublin local authorities continue to highlight the ongoing challenges in acquiring land for active recreation and sports facilities, not least of all because of the housing pressures that are in the capital and the pressure on them to deliver housing, as well as the fact that they often cannot compete with the premium that is on land that is being bought for houses and that could be used to develop additional playing pitches. Clubs and community groups have repeatedly raised the pressures with elected representatives and my clinic has often been attended by club representatives who point to the fact that there is a huge shortage of pitches. This is brought into focus when we see, for example, that less than 30% of the pitches that GAA clubs play on in Dublin are owned by the GAA clubs themselves, so they massively rely on the pitches the local authorities provide. Dublin City Council last year stated that there is no capacity to accommodate new playing fields in existing public parks and open spaces. South Dublin County Council operates 166 pitches serving over 1,000 teams. The local authorities have rightly been told to focus on housing, but that means that they are not necessarily always able to compete with developers. Will there be an outcome from the engagement between the Minister of State's Department and the Department of housing on what this looks like as a concrete proposal for local authorities?

It is a real challenge. I have met lots of Dublin clubs over the last period of time. Access to land is a real difficulty for them in meeting the needs of their local communities. Certainly, in order to develop thriving communities, if we are developing new houses, we have to make sure we are developing the recreation and sporting facilities to be able to match that as we go forward. It is something on which I will be intensively engaging with the Minister for housing, Deputy Browne, and his Department to make sure we have an integrated and co-ordinated approach as we develop and meet the real challenge we have in housing and, equally, ensuring that sporting facilities can be developed alongside that. I am certainly very happy to work with the Deputy and other Deputies across the city to try to make progress on that. I thank him for raising it here in the Chamber this evening.

I welcome the Minister of State's positive engagement on this matter. Pointing to an example in my own constituency of late, the Dublin City Services Sports and Social Club on the Coldcut Road became available for purchase. I think it is a classic example where, if such a fund existed, it could have supported the local authority in acquiring that asset and making it available for amenity in a part of Dublin that is underserved in terms of overall sports provision. It is important when we talk about the acquisition of land for playing pitches that we also ensure we put the proper pavilions and dressing rooms on those pitches to ensure we maximise participation in sport by boys and girls and that the playing areas and lands acquired are of such dimensions that they facilitate as many disciplines as possible. One of the things we are noticing with the Clonburris strategic development zone, which was passed a number of years ago, is that it does not always facilitate a full-size GAA pitch on the multi-use playing areas that are being made available. I look forward to the outcome of this engagement. I might take up the matter with the Minister of State in the coming months to see if we can progress this and give local authorities support to provide the pitches that are so desperately needed in the Dublin local authorities.

I thank Deputy Moynihan. I know this is something he has been raising with local authorities and advocating very strongly on. I have engaged with them on this issue as well. I look forward to working closely with the Deputy to see how we can make progress on this really pressing need.