The Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Dr McDaid, has strongly rejected Opposition claims that his Department is "sitting on £9.3 million unspent cash".
Fine Gael's spokesman on tourism, sport and recreation, Mr Bernard Allen, yesterday accused the Minister of failing to spend the money allocated to him to implement the Government's Drug Initiative.
According to Mr Allen, it was "incredible" that when the Government was paying so much lip service to tackling the drug problem, Dr McDaid had not spent his full allocation on the initiative.
This Drugs Initiative was launched earlier this year to help to mobilise local communities in fighting illegal drugs and funded projects, including sports and advice facilities, in drug-affected areas.
However, a strongly-worded statement issued later by Dr McDaid and the Minister of State at his Department, Mr Chris Flood, said Mr Allen displayed a complete lack of understanding of progress being made in community-based initiatives fighting against the drug problem.
The Government had allocated £10 million to support the implementation of 234 separate measures under the Drugs Initiative. However, there were insufficient community structures in place at the outset of the initiative to deliver the proposed actions, the Ministers said.
They insisted that every penny committed would be available once the projects were ready to go into operation.
The funds had not been drawn down as quickly as had been originally anticipated, despite the best efforts of all the voluntary and statutory bodies involved, they said. This meant that £5 million was left over in the current year and the money would go to projects as soon as they were ready.
Meanwhile, Dr McDaid confirmed there had also been a saving of £3 million this year on grants for sports facilities.
The "saving" resulted from some projects not going ahead; delays in obtaining planning permission and a hold-up in raising "sufficient funds locally to get projects up and running".
The Minister also revealed that a further £1.27 million had been saved on the grant fund for sports organisations. This arose because expenditure had been less than anticipated for certain grants to sports bodies - and staff appointments to the Sports Council were taken up later than provided for.
"Far from sitting on `unspent cash' as Deputy Allen alleges, I am ensuring that these savings will be redirected to other useful purposes and, furthermore, I have secured funding next year to ensure the completion of projects which promoters were unable to deliver on in the current year," Dr McDaid said.