To ask the Minister for Communities for his assessment of the risk to the budget of Sport NI for grassroots and elite sports, over the remaining Assembly mandate.

I am concerned that the constraints on my Department’s budget mean that I do not have the funding I would wish to have to promote sport, or indeed to meet the demand for housing, arts, heritage and other functions of my Department.

The current Sport NI budget helps to cover essential costs for the organisation including running costs for the Sports Institute and the Tollymore National Outdoor Centre as well as providing grant funding to several organisations across the sector such as Disability Sport NI and Special Olympics Ulster.

As is the case for all publicly funded bodies, budgets have reduced over the last ten years and organisations have had to adapt to absorb funding reductions as well as inflationary pressures.

While Sport NI continues to deliver efficiencies and consider different methods of service delivery to live within its budgets, there is no doubt that this becomes more difficult as pressures increase.

Lottery funding is also distributed by Sport NI to fund sport in Northern Ireland, and it remains to be seen how the quantum of this funding may change over the next few years after the recent change in National Lottery licence holder to Allwyn.

I will continue to push for additional funding to enable not only the maintenance of current levels of funding, but to increase the support we give to sport and other areas which fall under the responsibility of my Department.