COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

MEETING OF TALLAGHT AREA COMMITTEE (1)

Friday, December 14, 2012

QUESTION NO. 2

QUESTION: Councillor D. Looney

"To ask the Manager for an update on the Gathering 2013 for the area under the remit of this Committee, and to make a statement on the matter

REPLY:

South Dublin County Tourism (SDCT) proposes to host a number of international tournaments (up to 22 to date) under "The Gathering 2012" featuring different sports, culture and art genres and focusing primarily on several of the most important tourism markets - the USA, UK, Canada and Europe. The underpinning idea is that we make the optimum use of the facilities that we have available to us in the County - particularly Tallaght Stadium, the National Baskteball Arena, and Corkagh Park, where there is one of the very few Baseball Diamonds in Ireland.

It is proposed to stage both international Soccer and American Football tournaments in Tallaght Stadium, which of course has catered for both sports on many occasions already. The National Basketball Arena will be used to host a number of international Basketball tournaments. These are the events which are likely to have the greatest impact on the area covered by this ACM, There are also both Bridge and Poker competitions scheduled to take place in the CityWest hotel.

All of these events are planned to be free of charge for spectators and are expected to attract very significant numbers of visitors from abroad. These visitors will have a great economic impact on many of the businesses in the area, obviously on the catering and hospitality sector in particular. This will help to stabilise jobs and businesses and may possibly create more jobs of a temporary nature.

SDCT and SDCC are working very closely together on this project and have linked up directly with the various National Governing Bodies of the various sports to ensure the successful hosting of these tournaments.

At the moment, we are engaged in assessing the Gathering Local Community Fund applications. The key objective of the Fund is to provide support to local and community Gathering event organisers and activities / projects which will drive international visitors to each County / City in the country. The funds will be provided by Failte Ireland but will be administered by each local authority for its own area.

There are a number of applications from the Tallaght ACM area under consideration, and the funding available is up to €2,500 per project. The funding issued is directly linked to the number of Overseas Visitors attracted to the event.