By John Considine
In a previous post (here) I examined the geographical distribution of the 2012 Sports Capital Grants. The top five counties in terms of per person allocations were Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo, Kilkenny and Cavan. These counties also did relatively well when it came to the Local Sports Partnership funding by the Irish Sports Council last week (here).
The table opposite reveals that the Leitrim, Sligo, Longford, and North Tipperary got the highest per person funding whereas Dublin City, South Dublin and Fingal got the lowest per person funding. Leitrim is getting €4.36 per person whereas Dublin City is getting one-tenth of that (€0.43). This is a massive difference in per person funding. Initially, I believed that these results might be purely driven by the population of each region. However, population only explains only part of the difference. If we examine the column with the absolute amount of LSP funding going to Leitrim we can see it is getting €138,735 for a population of 31,794. By contrast, South Dublin is getting €127,580 for a population 8 times larger than Leitrim. Sligo has a population of 65,393 according to the 2011 Census of Population. Sligo is going to get €242,556 in Local Sports Partnership funding for 2014. This is a larger absolute amount than Dublin City, South Dublin and Fingal. These regions have populations of double and triple that of Sligo. The result is that Sligo is getting €3.71 per person while South Dublin is getting €0.48 per person.
When compared to other areas of funding, Local Sports Partnership have not been hit as badly by the current fiscal crisis as some other areas of Irish Sports Council funded sport. One third of the regions (10 out of 30) have a higher level of funding in 2014 than they had in 2011. The table opposite presents those regions with the largest increases and decreases. Again, Leitrim has cause for celebration. Cavan, Mayo and Wicklow did even better. Unfortunately for Dublin City, it is again at the wrong end of the table. It lies in third last position with its 2014 funding 82.4% of its 2011 amount.
Regardless of whether it is Sports Capital Grants (allocated directly by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport) or Local Sports Partnership funding (allocated by the Irish Sports Council) it seems that Leitrim, Sligo, Cavan and Mayo are amongst the best for attracting sports funding.
Regardless of whether it is Sports Capital Grants (allocated directly by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport) or Local Sports Partnership funding (allocated by the Irish Sports Council) it seems that Leitrim, Sligo, Cavan and Mayo are amongst the best for attracting sports funding.
RSS Feed
