The Irish government is to invest 26m euro in local sports projects across the country - the first round of sports capital funding in four years.

An indication of how badly the country's grassroots sporting infrastructure needs reinvestment can be seen in the number of projects that were turned down.

A total of 2,170 applications were received for the funding, seeking a total of 229m euro in funding. The 26m euro awarded means less than 11 per cent of all applicants were successful.

The funding - sourced from the government's Sports Capital Programme - will provide more than 600 clubs with improvements in basic facilities such as sport pitches, tracks, floodlighting, security fencing and much needed refurbishments.

For the 2012 funding round, the government has introduced new criteria to ensure money gets spent more evenly between regions.

Between 1998 and 2010, 140 euro per person was provided in sports capital funding across the country, but while the best performing county got 196 euro of sports funding on a per capita basis, other counties got only a little over half of that.

To counter that, this year's funding has been allocated on a per-capita basis to each county with a weighting for past performance (to see the full list of regions and how much each received, click here).

Minister of state for tourism and sport, Michael Ring, said: "I'm excited about the allocations being made today.

"These allocations will benefit people in every county by giving them more opportunities to get involved in sport, whatever their ability. This funding will allow a diverse array of sports clubs and groups to build and improve much-needed facilities, or to purchase sports equipment."