Surplus cash increasingly used to plug gaps in State funding

FRANK McDONALD

ALL SURPLUS funds raised by the National Lottery here are transferred to the exchequer and used to finance spending in four areas: youth, sport, recreation and amenities; health and welfare; arts, culture and heritage; and the Irish language.

There is no equivalent of the UK Heritage Lottery Fund. Instead, money is disbursed by Government departments such as Education, Environment, Health, and Arts and Heritage as well as State agencies such as the Arts Council and the Health Service Executive.

“It’s a completely different set-up [compared to the UK],” says the National Lottery’s PR manager, Paula McEvoy. “We were set up to raise substantial funds for four areas, and it’s not our role at all to decide where the funding goes. We’re also minnows compared to the British lottery.”

The National Lottery, run by An Post, raised €243.7 million for “good causes” in 2010. The cumulative sum since the lottery started in 1987 “currently stands at the very substantial amount of over €3.6 billion”.

Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin is considering proposals to sell the National Lottery’s licence, which could be worth €500 million. Of this, the Government has decided that €200 million would go to the controversial children’s hospital of Ireland project.

Over the years, it is known that some ministers have taken great interest in the disbursement of lottery money, channelling it to sports clubs or other community projects in their own constituencies.

“It’s been run like a slush fund,” one source said.

Another source said most of the surplus lottery money is used as a substitute for State funding for a wide variety of voluntary care groups, such as the Irish Wheelchair Association, Irish Guide Dogs, the Irish Deaf Society, Irish Autism Action and the Order of Malta.

In the arts, beneficiaries include the Wexford Opera Festival, the Imagine Arts Festival in Waterford, the Clifden Arts Festival in Co Galway, Limerick Youth Theatre, Young Irish Film Makers in Co Kilkenny and Fidget Feet Aerial Dance Theatre in Co Westmeath.

Arts organisations may be reluctant to admit it, but many of them are critically dependent on lottery funding. The amounts in 2010 ranged from small grants of €100 for individual participation in the Visual Artists in Prison scheme to €7.25 million for the Abbey Theatre.

On the sports front, funding has gone to Late Nite Soccer Leagues in Dublin, the Irish Surfing Association, Everton Football Club in Co Cork, St Brigid’s GAA Club in Co Wexford, Clare Showjumpers, Carlow Gymnastics Club and Waterford Regional Sports Centre.

Lottery funding is also used to support Irish athletes, including those training for the London Olympics this summer.

Boxer Katie Taylor has received over €250,000, while other beneficiaries include swimmer Gráinne Murphy, boxer Ken Egan and athlete Derval O’Rourke.

Capital funding for sport has been even more substantial, amounting to just over €50 million in 2010 alone. Mostly, this went to sports clubs for all-weather pitches, new changing rooms and other facilities. Over the years, the redevelopment of Croke Park got €110 million.

Other big calls on lottery funding are the Office of the Minister for Children, which received an allocation of €38.6 million in 2010, of which nearly €20 million went to “special projects for youth”, and the Department of Health, which got €3.78 million for 183 organisations.

By contrast, the total allocation for Ireland’s heritage amounted to just over €2 million, including “buildings at risk” grants. These were paid out by the Heritage Council for repairs to 62 historic buildings, in amounts ranging from less than €2,000 to €33,746.

The council’s budget has since been slashed, and it has now amalgamated its “buildings at risk” and heritage management grants schemes. The overall amount available to fund both schemes fell sharply from a peak of €3 million in 2007 to €1.46 million in 2010.

With further cuts in the last budget, the allocation is down by 84 per cent over the last two years. Yet studies have shown that grants for heritage projects have paid off two- to fourfold for the exchequer in income tax and VAT on the purchase of Irish goods and services.

The Heritage Council has had UK consultants carry out an economic evaluation of Ireland’s historic environment, which is due to be published soon, and will be hosting a series of seminars on “heritage as an engine of economic growth”, starting in Galway on March 3rd.

UK LOTTERY FUND WINNERS BUILDING PROJECTS OF LASTING VALUE 

THE NEW Museum of Liverpool is billed as “the largest newly built national museum in Britain for more than a century”.

It is also a prime example of the numerous projects of lasting value that have been levered by the UK Heritage Lottery Fund throughout Britain and Northern Ireland.

A plaque inside the entrance notes that the museum was officially “opened by Her Majesty The Queen accompanied by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh on 1 December 2011”.

Right alongside it is another plaque announcing that it was “opened on behalf of the people of Liverpool by Finn O’Hare, aged 6, on 19 July 2011”.

This charmingly Liverpudlian gesture of having a “people’s opening” prompted the young boy to write saying how excited he was to see the new museum taking shape, and putting himself forward for the job of opening it.

”It will be great. I am good at opening things – please can I open the museum?”

And so he did.

Beneath the two equally prominent plaques is another announcing that the Museum of Liverpool was “supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund”.

As a key element in the city’s transformation, the £72 million (€86.4 million) project was also aided by British government agencies and the EU.

The elongated modernist block, with its sculpted stone facades and picture windows, was designed by Danish architects 3xN and stands alongside the Three Graces at Pier Head.

With three floors of exhibition galleries linked by a swirling staircase, with play areas for children, it is hugely popular and free of charge.

The Museum of Liverpool is the latest of some 900 museums, art galleries and public libraries to benefit from Heritage Lottery funding of £1.42 billion (€1.7 billion).

As a result “from Belfast to Norwich and Swansea to Shetland, towns and cities across the UK have museums and archives they can be proud of”, it says.

Over the past 17 years, the fund has disbursed over £1.5 billion (€1.8 billion) towards the conservation of more than 14,000 historic buildings.

These range from the Art Deco lido in London’s Brocknell Park to the once-derelict St George’s Market in Belfast and the last surviving back-to-back terraced housing in Birmingham.

Kevin Baird, chief executive of the Irish Heritage Trust, said that the impact of the Heritage Lottery Fund has been “stunning ... and changed the game completely”.

The pay-off in terms of tourism had been “huge”, not just from high-profile schemes but also from interventions in lesser known places like Draperstown in Co Derry.

Mr Baird, who spent 10 years working for the Heritage Lottery Fund in Northern Ireland, said it gets roughly £10 to £12 million (€12 to €14.4 million) a year in grants from the fund, which generally covers 50 per cent of the costs of approved projects – such as the new Giant’s Causeway visitor centre now under construction.

It was not just a question of “shoving money out the door”, he added.

• Email Us
• |