Dublin City Council has confirmed that it has a plan in place to fund its proposed Whitewater Rafting Attraction for the docklands.
The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage turned down its application for support from the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund.
In a document published on Friday DCC set out a funding model that made no mention of the URDF funding.
However, under this plan it would need to rely on €15 million in Government funding in grants from other departments.
It said these "anticipated grants" would be in respect of the "tourism, sport and swift water rescue elements" project.
It has been confirmed to RTÉ News that it has not yet applied for these grants.
The current estimated cost of the project is €25 million.
Its funding plan will also rely on €6m from Funding Source Development Levies and €4m from its Capital reserve.
In December 2019 Dublin City Councillors voted in favour of the project by 37 to 19.
In January the City Council began the first stage of a tendering process.
A spokesperson for DCC confirmed that no decision would be made on the future of the project before this process concludes and a more detailed costing of the project is obtained.
Any decision on whether to proceed with the plan would have to be voted on again by Dublin City Council.
This is not the first time this project has been refused funding.
The same document confirmed that the project failed to attract sport funding in the past.
The FAQ document said that "this was primarily due to the early stage it was at when the application was made (e.g. no planning permission had been obtained at the time of application). The application was also considered not to have met two key criteria which related to sharing arrangements with Community & Clubs and between National Governing Bodies and Local Authorities."
However, it said that "a lot has changed" since then, that Part VIII planning approval has been secured and that "an International Canoe Federation standard training facility" would be accessible to Elite Canoe Slalom Athletes and the City Council "intends to make the facility available to various local and national entities..."
"When a new application is made under the Large Scale Sports Infrastructure Scheme we would expect a different outcome," it concludes.
Councillor Mannix Flynn has been a long-time critic of the project, though he abstained from the vote in 2019.
He has called on Chief Executive of Dublin City Council Owen Keegan to abandon the project, now that it has failed to secure urban regeneration funding.
"I am glad to see the Government has told them that they are not going to offer any money," Cllr Flynn said, "what I'm asking Mr Keegan, the CEO, as a Director of Dublin City Council, is to desist and to announce that this is dead in the water. He shouldn't be seeking money from any other quarters."
Cllr Flynn said that this project offered nothing to local children who swim in the Liffey each summer, "this was a commercial vanity project. You have a river Liffey which is magnificent just there, but it needs to be cleaned up."
Labour Party Councillor Dermot Lacey supports the plan and voted in favour of it, and he is angry at Minister O'Brien's decision to deny it URDF funding.
"I don't believe we can continue to ignore the development of that area. The North Inner City needs infrastructure, it needs community and recreational infrastructure, it needs jobs, and this project would have brought that," Mr Lacey said.
"Of course Dublin needs lots of other things too, in particular we need housing, but this was an economic project, a recreational project and I am quite angry that the Minister should take it upon himself to make that decision."
However Green Party Councillor Janet Horner who voted in favour of the project believes it is now time to reassess this project.
"I think that the project had merit at one point. We gave the Council the vote of confidence to go ahead and explore the project. Now costs have escalated (from €12m to €25m), the pandemic has happened in the meantime, priorities for the city have changed.
"I think the message is changing from within the Councillors. This proposal came from senior management, they brought this forward to us, it wasn't in the development plan, it didn't come from our communities or our constituents necessarily.
"This is a time to take a step back and do things the way we should do things as a council which is really to consult with the constituency, to consult with the community and build the ideas from there," Cllr Horner said.
