Review of GAA funds distribution won’t target Dublin

The GAA body established to review discretionary expenditure is expected to report before Christmas. It was set up within the last year amidst – but independent of – concerns about the amount of games development funding Dublin was receiving.

In his annual report this year director general Páraic Duffy made reference to “the efforts of National Financial Management Committee to try to address, in so far as it is possible, the disparity that exists in resources and fundraising capacity among counties”.

Dublin’s games development grant of €1.46 million constituted 47 per cent of the total grants in this category disbursed to all the counties in Ireland.

At the time the GAA’s finance director Tom Ryan, a member of the committee, denied that Dublin would be the focus, pointing out that the body had already been set up.

“There is a small group that has been constituted,” he said, “to look specifically, not at Dublin – it would be unfair to characterise it as Dublin – but just to look at the total amount that we generate in a year and if you think in terms of discretionary spend, maybe €25-30 million and our job is to look at how we can actually distribute that in the most equitable way.”

There is no doubt, however, that the proportion earmarked for Dublin has caused controversy.

Furthermore in 2005 the Irish Sports Council (ISC) agreed to put €1 million a year into the county to develop participation in Gaelic games. This was used to appoint games promotion officers (GPOs) to clubs in order that they could assist with training and organisation as well as devising and implementing out-reach programmes to local schools.

It wasn’t free to everyone and the funding basis is 50:50 between the participating clubs and the county board, which accesses the money through Croke Park, as that was how it was decided to distribute the ISC funding.

The GAA is caught between the need to maintain development programmes in the country’s main population centre and anxieties elsewhere about the growing strength on the field of Dublin’s footballers who have won four of the last six All-Irelands.

Speaking on Thursday, Ryan explained that the report had not yet been completed but that it would not seek to target Dublin.

“It’s not about chopping what Dublin have. The two extremes are often cited as Dublin and Leitrim but Dublin can say it costs a fortune to run what we run and Leitrim can correspondingly argue we have very few resources to run what we’re trying to run. Both arguments have merit.

“One thing worth considering is that the investment that has gone into Dublin has worked in terms of spreading the games. There have been other investments elsewhere – albeit not on the same scale – that haven’t worked.

“I also think if people were to take a longer-term view and look back over a number of years they would see that it’s maybe not as skewed as people might perceive. Things have been done in other areas of the country – albeit largely capital projects rather than coaching.”

He also said that one of the challenges has been to find a fair way of distributing funds that takes into account population but also the needs of smaller units.

“The old model is that you divide everything by 32 and the other extreme is to use some form of proportion. If so, what proportion do you use: membership, population or number of clubs? For any one of those there is a counter argument.

‘Augmented grant’

“In previous years there used to be an augmented grant for what used to be called weaker counties but we got rid of it because every year there used to be cases made for counties you wouldn’t believe to have themselves classified as weaker counties so that they could avail of it.”

Ryan said that the changes to the funding model would most likely be “nuanced” and fluid, as the feeling is that rigidly structured grants are inefficient.

“Rather than tie ourselves down to any particular formula we’re going to look at a standard amount that is available to everybody and we’re going to look at augmenting that for a certain number of counties but they won’t be set in stone year on year. It will depend on the circumstances the counties find themselves in either in terms of day-to-day operations or projects they may have in hand.

“We’re also going to look at the capital projects in various counties and make them eligible for a higher degree of funding than other counties. I’m loth simply to pump money into counties because, what do you get?

“We might try and provide more resources for counties both in the realms of looking after teams as well as the administrative and commercial side of things so that counties don’t have to spend money on things that we can provide for them. We would try and set up the facilities for this and see what services counties want.”

He concluded by defending the distribution system as it has been operating but accepting that it needs to be more responsive.

“What we would like going forward is something that’s a bit more agile. The flexibility to focus on specific projects for a certain period of time – two, three, five years – with specific outcomes to be measured. I would hate to think what we’re doing is terrible inequitable and I don’t think it is even if it may not be perfect.”