It is great to have the opportunity on Questions on Policy or Legislation to ask about the swimming pools we need all around Ireland. The swimming pool gap analysis report recently came out, which showed us that there are significant gaps around. The Minister is well aware of the swimming pool gap in north Kildare. As a councillor, I ensured a significant amount of funding was put in place for a pool but there is still a gap to be filled to reach the final cost. This is something we have discussed regularly. I am keen to provide a swimming pool for north Kildare. How can we ensure we get that off the ground in the new year with support from the Minister's Department?

I thank Deputy Neville for raising this issue. We discussed this previously at a meeting held in the Department. The Deputy is right; Swim Ireland published a gap analysis with regard to swimming pools in the last week. There are huge gaps in relation to the number of swimming pools available across the country, particularly in large urban centres. What were once small villages are now massive towns with populations as big as Limerick city's. We need to invest in them. I made it very clear the other day that, where these projects are led and driven by local authorities and developed on local authority land, my Department will engage and liaise with those local authorities on the possibility of delivering them through the large-scale sports infrastructure fund.