Limited room for manoeuvre on funding

Seán Moran On Gaelic Games: The GAA and Gaelic Players Association will meet over the next few days to see what can be constructed from the rubble of last week's Government response to the bodies' joint submission on the subject of welfare grants for players.

It's a pretty futile exercise in the short term now that the starter's gun has sounded for the general election.

Not everyone expected the outgoing Sports Minister John O'Donoghue to respond to the submission in advance of the election but he did, albeit in a manner which doesn't really resolve the issue.

The GPA have been in pursuit of some sort of material recognition of the effort expended by intercounty players for nearly the whole of this decade. The quest began with the proposed £100/€127 a week to compensate footballers and hurlers for lost career opportunities. This campaign morphed into an attempt to avail of the tax breaks on offer to professional sports people under the 2002 Finance Act, a proposal rejected by then Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy. The next version envisaged the inclusion of Gaelic players in a carding scheme similar to that applicable to international athletes.

For most of this time the GAA kept a frosty distance from it all, still smarting a little at the very existence of the GPA and edgy at the implications for amateurism. Since last year the institutional relationship has improved with GAA president Nickey Brennan's appointment of Páraic Duffy as the full-time player welfare manager and the player grants, official recognition for the GPA and commercial possibilities have been on the talks' agenda.

The joint submission for public funding to pay for these grants was the result of the Minister's not unreasonable insistence that for him to approve these payments he needed the GPA and the GAA to agree on the details. You didn't, however, have to be one of life's embittered cynics to suspect it also suited the Government to set as a precondition the meeting of minds between players and Croke Park.

Given prospects for such a meeting of minds looked about as likely as a pole dancer at Scór, the assumption could have been that the public money would stay un-disbursed. It's worth noting rather than break the bad news to the GPA, the outgoing Government has consistently encouraged the players to chase the alchemist's stone of turning their campaign into public payment.

McCreevy encouraged "lateral thinking" when addressing the GPA five years ago. Then two and a half years ago, according to GPA chief executive Dessie Farrell: "We have met with Finance Minister Brian Cowen and other department officials, and they've all been very positive."

Six months ago, again according to Farrell: " . . . essentially what the Taoiseach said himself last Friday week was that the Government didn't want to be seen to be fudging on this, and that the money would be made available for players . . . "

Only last January Minister O'Donoghue said while the GPA-GAA talks were ongoing: "I have been very clear I am prepared to make that €5 million available, and that remains on the table, including for the year 2007."

The only bar set by O'Donoghue was that the two parties should agree a joint submission, which they duly did last month with an agreement that intercounty players would be entitled to expenses ranging from €1,650 to €2,800 on production of receipts for a variety of purchases relating to intercounty activity. That initial bar might have been smoothly surmounted but an altogether more formidable barrier was waiting down the road: what exactly would be the appropriate vehicle for such grants? When the Minister rejected the proposal to pay grants to players there was also a key passage in his response concerning the proposed means through which he would consider providing the funds.

"I have indicated I am prepared to make funding available, on an annual basis, which will facilitate the GAA in freeing up existing monies within the association to meet the additional costs of agreed player welfare supports in the event that an agreement is reached between the GAA and the GPA on the issue of additional player welfare supports.

"This funding can be provided either through the existing Sport Capital Programme in respect of prioritised infrastructural projects or through additional funding by the Irish Sports Council in respect of games development. A combination of both may also be applied and the GAA have been aware of this position for some time."

The contrasting reactions to the Minister's remarks were in a way predictable. The GPA had already agreed not to pursue the matter if public funds weren't forthcoming so to keep the proposal alive the players' union had to project publicly that the money had been procured. The problem from the GAA's point of view is that it is politically impossible - especially in view of a membership some of whom had to be talked off the roof in order to accept the recent joint submission - to agree effectively to divert capital grants into player payments.

Unless the Department has something creative in mind, there is no practical way to fund the players' payments from either the Sports Capital Programme or games development bursaries. For a start application for funding under both is rigorous and project-based so any successful schemes would be entitled to whatever grants were approved. Secondly not all of the money allocated is actually paid out so how would Croke Park monitor the difference between what it was entitled to and what it was getting basically to facilitate "the freeing up of existing monies"? These concerns had been raised by Brennan in his address to congress in Kilkenny last month.

The background to last week's events had seen the Minister make it clear he wouldn't be paying out the money in individual grants but the GAA making it equally clear they couldn't agree to perform sleights of hand with funding under the capital and development programmes. Speaking in this newspaper yesterday GPA commercial manager Donal O'Neill backed the Minister's view. "Nothing has changed from our perspective; it remains up to the GAA to make the correct submission. The minister was very clear. There was no contradiction. We were surprised with the GAA reaction."

There was no reason for the GPA to be surprised, as Croke Park's attitude to the diversion of funding under different headings had been abundantly clear during discussions on the joint submission.

No one expects O'Donoghue to be still in the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism next month so the response to his statements of last week will be largely irrelevant. Nonetheless the GAA will try to hammer out some sort of a follow-up with the GPA even if the room for manoeuvre looks fairly limited.