Swim Ireland Announce Club Resilience Grants

November 19, 2020

In June 2020, the Government approved an investment programme of up to €70 million to support the sports sector, this included a Sports Club Resilience Fund of €15 million to support clubs. Swim Ireland was fortunate to receive a total of €500k from Sport Ireland to support the clubs under this scheme.

This was only made possible by the work of Sport Ireland, the Federation of Irish Sport, Ministers Catherine Martin TD and Jack Chambers TD from the Department of Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and the Gaeltacht and before them Ministers Shane Ross and Brendan Griffin TD at the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport.

Internally, the team in Swim Ireland have worked extremely hard also, firstly at National level with Swim Ireland CEO Sarah Keane and Chairman Peter Conway attending meetings and engaging with various departments to ensure that swimming was recognised as needing support and then our staff working directly with clubs to ensure that the process was completed in full, in a timely, clear and transparent manner.

In early August Swim Ireland devised and prepared a funding application process which was checked with Sport Ireland and released to clubs on the 5^th August 2020. Clubs were provided with support via the Clubs and Community team through phone calls and webinars, with the application process closing on Monday, 31 August 2020.

In total we received applications from 37 clubs across our network of clubs in the Republic of Ireland. It was evident from the standard of applications that clubs spent considerable time in preparing detailed applications and supporting documentation.

We are pleased to say that we have concluded the extensive review process and we are happy to announce that we have awarded 36 Clubs funding ranging from a total of €3k up to €29k. A full breakdown of allocations can be found in the table below.

Speaking on this announcement Swim Ireland Head of Clubs, Community and Competitions Adam Cox said: “Having spoken to a number of clubs I have heard first-hand what this funding means. This funding will have a real impact to support the longevity of several clubs who were at a real threat of closure.

We are delighted to also announce that we will be releasing a second round of grant applications for clubs that did not apply originally, but now find themselves in further financial difficulty. We will also support clubs who wish to apply with a small grant in relation to specific COVID-19 expenditure, for example, face masks, sanitizers etc. More information to follow in the coming days.