They note that in the Irish political system "the minister, has clear and predictable incentives for targeting spending". They also note that in The 2007 Irish Candidate Study "sports clubs and schools are the top two areas that legislators themselves believe it is worth claiming credit for". Given Ireland Proportional Representation - Single Transferable Vote system, one might expect the government expenditure to be related to the geographic location of the deciding minister(s).
Suiter & O'Malley run three models to test if expenditure might be directed towards the government's core supporters, towards swing constitutencies, or if it is determined by the decision making rule. The results of their tests are presented in the table below (Table 4). The third model tests their suggestion that the decision rule is the most important. They say their "results are both positive and highly significant and the model shows that constitutencies of the decision-making ministers do significantly better than other constituencies". It seems the sports grants go to the constituency of the Minister for Sport and the Minister for Finance.