Department for Communities officials have confirmed “two clubs” commenced legal action after being omitted from the Northern Ireland Football Fund – but no timeline is set for a resolution.

In October, Crusaders and Derry City revealed they would join forces to begin legal proceedings after missing out on progressing to the Football Fund’s next stage alongside 20 other clubs with the latter saying “we believe we were left with no other option”.

Projects totalling around £82million were sent through to receive due diligence checks and Communities Minister Gordon Lyons has announced that the first offers of financial support have been issued to Irish League clubs.

On Thursday, letters of offer for funding to prepare outline business cases was issued, representing a total financial support of up to £400,000 and marking the first awarding of money.

placeholder image — Communities Minister Gordon Lyons is pictured in his office signing the Northern Ireland Football Fund Letter of Offers

The Department for Communities has confirmed the £400,000 is from a resource budget separate to the £36.2million capital budget.

Only successful business cases will progress to the next stage – none of the £36.2million is being dished out at this point with 10 clubs finalising their cases while another 10 are essentially starting from scratch.

There were concerns that legal action could further delay the arrival of funds for Irish League clubs, but the Department of Communities are keen to press on with the process after Thursday’s update.

"I can’t foresee any scenario where it (legal action) would impact the money,” said a spokesperson. “We can’t get into the detail of all that, but we’re issuing these letters today and we’re moving forward.

“Yes (there is a legal challenge ongoing around the Football Fund). I think the clubs have confirmed it themselves in the press, just the two.

"We don’t know a timeline on that at the minute, but I’m sure there’ll be more reported on that as timelines emerge”.

Clubs will be expected to submit completed business cases within three to six months for Departmental approval and officials confirmed Lyons continues to push for more money to upgrade Irish League facilities.

"The letters of offer will have an end date, all of our letters of offer do,” they added. “It’s not a case where people can keep fiddling about with it for years.

"We’re hoping it will all be done within this calendar year. We can’t make expenditure decisions on the capital budget until we have approved business cases.

"Clubs need to go away, develop these business cases...it’s pure coincidence that it’s 10 and 10, but half of the cohort are just finalising and half are starting largely from scratch.

"Those will be submitted at different times. They will start submitting those bids to us, they will go through an internal approvements process, but once they get their business cases approved, that gives us the ability to start making expenditure decisions for capital awards.

"The Minister has always made the commitment that he wants to secure additional funding...we have that ringfenced budget and haven’t yet made any expenditure decisions against it.

"We know from the need that we have assessed out there that it falls far short of what we expect the sector needs, but realistically we need to get projects moving forward and business case approval so we can be very clear on what we need to allocate.

"It won’t be the full project cost as soon as this first business case is completed, a lot of these are very big projects which need to go through phases...additional money will be needed and the Minister is working towards that, but it won’t be needed this year.”