Parties are not playing ball

CRISIS IN SPORT:Sport has taken its usual position on the backburner as hard times kick in, writes TOM HUMPHRIES

IT WAS either very poignant or very funny. Bertie Ahern, one time big kahuna of our banana plutocracy, stood there and lamented that nobody had told him what was going on with the banks. Good help is still hard to get.

Bertie, however, framed the perspective. The biggest regret of his public life was (cue drum roll, enter man in top hat shouting, ‘Ta da!’) not getting his stadium built. That is correct. Here was our Kubla Khan, the man from where Tolka the stinky river ran, but without the stately pleasure dome he had decreed.

Ah here. Bertie stood at some point between the two large and modern stadiums which adorn this small, imperfectly formed city and he made his sad face. That face told us one thing. A town with no Bertie Bowl, is a town with no soul. It made us all feel very small and petty. We do get the Government we deserve, after all.

As for sport on a broader level? Bertie’s keening is as much as has been said about sport in this general election, if you don’t count the prohibition on the coursing of bondholders. We are still a long way from seeing sport as anything other than a garish bandwagon which may be leapt upon in the good times, a gift bucket from which to distribute favours down at ward level politics.

We have little or no coherent policy on sports science, sports ethics, sports tourism or sport as a key ingredient of public policy in health and education. Fianna Fáil, indeed, managed to produce a manifesto which made no mention of sport whatsoever.

The Greens accidentally left their bit on sport out. Sinn Féin are getting back to us.

The great and slightly tragic irony of all this is of course the fact that no party acknowledges the reality of sport in Ireland.

We, the citizenry, pay for our sport through a voluntary taxation known as the National Lottery and through our footfall through the turnstiles at major events and through our massive tradition of volunteerism.

This culture of sport which we have created impacts positively on our health, education, crime and social welfare policies. It creates jobs and income. Yet each party approaches the issue like a parsimonious parent reluctantly opening the cookie jar.

All of which is astonishing. Nothing provides the dividend which investment in sport provides for us as a society. Over 270,000 people volunteer their time on a weekly basis to make sure that 1.7 million of the population get to participate in sport through 12,000 clubs in every town, village and suburb in Ireland.

The Irish Sports Council reckons the €49.6 million which it distributed last year, was the seed capital for an industry worth in excess of €1.8 billion to Ireland every year.

Over 80 per cent of the money provided by the Government goes into sport at grassroots level, creating the programmes from which the elite players and athletes will emerge. More importantly, that spend addresses the health, education and general well-being of the population.

And it isn’t money poured into a black hole. For every €100 spent by the government on sport another €149 flows back into the public purse. Win-Win you would have thought.

Sarah O’Connor is the chief executive of the Federation of Irish Sports which was established in happier times by the National Governing Bodies of Sport in 2002 as a representative body for all sporting organisations and an independent, non-party political voice for sport.

“Sport is on the backburner, along with a range of other social issues. When compared to even arts and culture there is a tendency to forget about sport,” says O’Connor.

The story of Government investment in sport in this country is a relatively short one. And until recently a relatively happy one. From 1997 onwards successive administrations took pleasure in dropping cash like confetti on grateful sports bodies. And then the nation realised its economy was all fur coat and no knickers. The upward trend in funding ended with the 2009 Budget.

Sport enjoyed funding of €311 million in 2008. This was slashed by 34 per cent back to €204 million in 2009. By November 2010 sports funding was down 62 per cent on the 2008 figure.

For 2011, the year before the London Olympics, the Irish Sports Council is looking at funding of €46.9 million for its programmes, another five per cent reduction on the 2010 figure. The Arts Council, by contrast, while suffering an identical percentage cut, will be disbursing funds of €62.5 million.

A key battleground will be the National Lottery. The politically skewed allocation of funds from the National Lottery has been one of the quiet but ongoing scandals of the last couple of decades. For as long as there was (just about) enough money to spread thinly over the country the peasants were kept in a state of perpetual gratitude of supplication and certain constituencies found themselves blossoming with all manner of arenas and facilities of which they had never dreamed.

Back in 1986 when the National Lottery came into being it wasn’t intended to work this way but the funds disappeared every year into the central exchequer before re-emerging sometime later with a pretty little bow celebrating the wise and benign works of the National Lottery.

The elements of the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport which affect clubs and sports bodies come under subhead C1 – grants for sporting bodies and for the provision of sports and recreational facilities under the sports capital programme; subhead C3 – grant-in-aid provided to the Irish Sports Council in respect of general assistance to sports organisations and expenditure on sports activities.

In 2010, €48 million has been allocated for subhead C1, which is the primary means of granting Government support for the provision of sports facilities at national, regional and local levels. Under the programme, the Department of Tourism, Culture and Sport allocates funding to voluntary, sporting and community organisations for the provision of sports and recreational facilities. Since 1998 total allocations in that category have been €738 million, or an average of €56.7 million a year. There is no doubt the funding flow has brought a certain modernity to what was previously a stone age sporting infrastructure in the country.

However, funding is shrinking and will continue to do so.

As for the €49.572 million for subhead C3, monies have been provided by the Irish Sports Council since its founding in the summer of 1999. The key functions are the promotion, development and co-ordination of competitive sport and the development of strategies for increasing participation in recreational sport and co-ordinating their implementation by all Irish bodies involved in promoting recreational sport and providing recreational sport facilities.

“Labour and Fine Gael both agreed to take another look at the National Lottery,” says O’Connor. “To maintain funding at 2011 levels would mean ring-fencing 18 per cent of last year’s National Lottery proceeds. That is the model which is used in the UK and in France. That is what they do with their Lotto. We would make the argument that a small proportion is all that would be needed to maintain the current funding levels.”

Maintaining funding at 2011 levels will, of course, mean maintaining an already emaciated limb in the condition it has declined to but that is part of the price we will have to pay.

The priority in the near future is to ensure sport stays represented at the cabinet table which at least acknowledges the way in which sport impacts on Irish society in so many ways. Realistically in terms of the actual funding available, the priority will be securing current funding.

“It is the seed capital that allows everything else, the coach, education volunteers, administration, child protection, high performance programme, that is the money which sport really can’t do without. So while it would be lovely to think that we could build new facilities at the moment that would be a secondary concern,” says O’Connor. “If a budget were to come back in relation to facilities it would have to be a lot more strategic. There has tended in the last 10 years to be no input from national bodies themselves.

“For example in the last round of the scheme the hockey body supported three applications; one from Wexford and two in Kildare for all weather surfaces. That was where they were experiencing the growth. The pitch which got the money was in south county Dublin. Hockey had employed their development officers to grow the sport in the commuter belt.”

Thus far Fine Gael and Labour have been the only parties to consider the role of sport in detail. Neither party’s stance on the maintenance of funding is particularly encouraging; both said that whilst they cannot make commitments regarding current funding levels they are committed to assisting sporting bodies through the difficult economic times and will look to maintain resources to the extent possible. Ho hum.

Fine Gael, to their credit, have promised to take a look at innovative funding streams and will look at removing obstacles to philanthropic donations to sport.

Arts and culture have charitable status, so a theatre group, for instance, can benefit tax free from donations. If this were to open up for sports clubs to access private philanthropic funding it might take some of the edge off the next few years.

O’Connor is happy enough with Labour’s intention to build sporting participation even if it fails to mentions National Governing Bodies and imagines such an increase could be created and sustained by Local Sports Partnerships. High Performance Sport is funded till 2012 with a full review promised after that.

“We would say fine, do a review of the way in which money is spent but high performance will always require some element of state support. Overall we can’t turn off the tap and switch it back on in five years’ time and think that everything will be alright.

“The sports community appreciate the state the country has found itself in, but sport can provide us with positive stories and give people positive components to their lives.”

Sport. It seems such a straightforward political proposition. This election is in no way about sport, however. It will take half a decade maybe before we pay the price for that. And we all know this country didn’t get rich and didn’t go broke by thinking half a decade ahead.