Charlie's amateur approach to taxing issue

Tom Humphries/LockerRoom The good thing about this Government is that the themes remain eternal. Nothing ever really changes, so you hang on to old columns knowing you'll be given the chance to conserve energy by recycling them.

It's just two years since we were talking about the tax break given by Charlie McCreevy to elite sports people. We didn't begrudge a penny of what was on offer to those who benefited, but we were a little miffed at Charlie's blank acceptance that it was jockeys who had initially lobbied him for the "imaginative" tax break. A Fianna Fáiler from the horse-country constituency? The jockeys must have known they weren't going to need excessive use of the whip to get Charlie feeling imaginative.

So for all "the prestige they bring to Ireland", jockeys, League of Ireland players and an assortment of other muscles got a welcome 40 per cent gross exemption from the attentions of Sir Roger Revenue.

We recalled at the time (a few environmentally friendly, recycled pars coming up) that Padraig Harrington had once told us a story about the last time he played in Croke Park. The story concerned the day that Harrington knew he was never going to wear the sky blue of Dublin and would have to settle for the less fulfilling life of the millionaire golf star.

It was a Schools final. Mars wrappers blowing about in the stands. A wet pitch. One of those days a kid will remember forever. Croke Park! Harrington was keen and, well, a huskier chap than he is now. He was centre back.

He was marking a fair-haired fellow from St Vincent's CBS. Same old same old, but with a difference. This was Croker after all. Shake hands. Eye each other. Sample the weight of the first shoulder contact. Nerves coursing through both boys. Then the ball was thrown in and the fair-haired kid went zero to 60 in two seconds. Parked to turbo. Swoosh. The fair-haired kid just nipped the breaking ball and swerved past the flailing Harrington.

When Harrington picked himself up off the floor he knew two things. His wrist was sprained. Golf was going to be his sport.

The fair-haired young fella was Dessie Farrell and last week Charlie McCreevy gave Dessie a kick in the gut. Dessie had come up with a modest proposal for tax breaks for elite amateur sports people. It was a popular and worthwhile idea. It got knocked back.

It wasn't just a knockback for Dessie Farrell and the GPA, it was a blow for players of many sports; it was a denial of our sporting culture but an expression of our Celtic Tiger sensibilities. Dessie Farrell didn't bring prestige to Ireland when he played. He didn't enhance our national appearance. But he added to the gaiety of the nation, he was a role model, a hero and an essential part of what we are. He was a player who gave back and still gives back. He was and is a leading figure in an organisation (the GAA) which has filled in the gaps left by Governmental poverty of imagination. He is part of that rare thing: a sporting movement that is also a cultural asset.

For years now the centrepiece of Government thinking on sport has been a prestige project. Abbotstown. A big, shiny, National Stadium. Whatever. Where is the imagination? Where is the grassroots encouragement?

Where is sport as an integral part of the educational curriculum? Why not have Leaving Cert points available for kids who achieve certain measurable levels of fitness and competency in sport as well as a demonstrable understanding of the ethics of sport and the basics of fitness and training?

Why not tax breaks not just for intercounty footballers, hurlers, camogie players and top achievers in sports like rowing and hockey, but tax breaks too for people who might wish to take two or three years out of their life and coach those sports in clubs and schools? The country is desperate for coaches for kids. Why not offer an adult with the right coaching basics the chance to finish work at 2:30 every day, making up most of the lost wage through a tax break, and let them go and work with kids? What about tax-free status for full-time sports coaches? What about tax breaks on equipment for these games, or a long-term health strategy that puts sports equipment into schools without advertising chips and burgers into the bargain?

What's happening? Where are we going? Amateur sport isn't sexy, but it's a part of what we are. Amateur sport ain't where the drug scandals are common and the inspirational moments are rare.

We can accept that giving tax breaks to professional sports stars won't have a great effect on the ordinary lives of amateur sports people. Dessie Farrell spoke last week about demonstrations and petitions. He's right to be angry, but nobody knows better than Dessie that footballers, hurlers et al, just like a quiet life.

And the Government knows kids will continue to play Gaelic games and other sports and aspire to be intercounty stars at football and hurling because the games are wonderful and fulfilment in them is a great pleasure and people will give their time freely. They know that the tickets will arrive into Government Buildings for the big occasions and they can go along and when the cups are getting handed out smile on all who smile and let on that nobody loves sport quite like they do.

Once again the Government have missed a significant chance to do something imaginative. It's laughable to think that just a few weeks ago Croke Park was being lectured to by a Government minister on what might be considered a "patriotic gesture". Here was a chance for the Government to promote our national sports and recognise the massive contribution which top-level amateur sports people make to our cultural identity and our social cohesiveness and, in the case of those who fill Croke Park and other places, to our tax revenue.

It's not fair on other sports to single out the GAA in this matter, but of the major sporting organisations it is the GAA which has most consistently been discriminated against in this matter and in the business of the National Stadium. Given the contribution the association makes to community and welfare and sense of place in Ireland, the treatment it has received is more than a little shocking.

The GAA, above all sporting organisations, has been linked with fostering the sense of place which so many Irish people have. Heimat, as the Germans call it. It was inspired communal mingling, social coherence and frequent celebration. What would the landscape be like without it?

Dessie Farrell will be back working today. So will most of the heroes of last summer and this weekend. They'll be working or studying. As will many of our putative Olympians. I'm not one who wants to see them being paid as professionals, but nobody wants to see them discriminated against.

Come the time they'll climb the steps of Croker or take an open-top bus through the capital and there'll be pols in shiny suits and mile-wide smiles there to greet them. Nothing changes. Themes eternal.