FAI, GAA and IRFU see sports council funding cut by 5%

For the third year running the organisations which govern the three main team sports in this country – the FAI, GAA and IRFU – have had to accept a 5 per cent reduction in their funding from the Irish Sports Council following the announcement of a €7.4 million investment package from the Government yesterday.

This annual funding from the taxpayers, announced by Minister of State for Sport Michael Ring at the Aviva Stadium yesterday, is targeted at grassroots GAA, football and rugby through programmes aimed at encouraging more opportunities for young people to take part in field sports.

The package is worth €2.4 million to the GAA, €2.7 million to the FAI and €2.36 million to the IRFU.

"It's down 5 per cent," said John Treacy, CEO of the Irish Sports Council, confirming the percentage split between the three has remained the same.

Bigger cut
"Three years ago when we got our funding Kieran [Mulvey, chairman of the Irish Sports Council] and myself met with all three of the sports and we said to them 'look, you're going to have to take a bigger cut than the rest of the sports' and we basically said that at the time this was going to be 5 per cent, 5 per cent, 5 per cent.

“So they’ve basically taken a 15 per cent cut over the last three years.

“Now, in fairness to the three organisations, they understood the situation, and they took it on the chin. What it enabled us to do then was to not cut the smaller sports by as much. They’ve taken the brunt of the cut.

“The important thing is that the Government gets a real return in terms of this money,” said Treacy, who added that for every €1 the Government and council put into them the three main field sports spend €3-€4.

“An estimated 700,000-plus children from 4,784 clubs played one or more of the three main field sports over the last year.

“Ninety per cent of primary school kids play some sport, and there are 3,500 primary schools,” says Treacy.

Describing the €7.4 million package as “big money in very difficult circumstances”, Mr Ring said the Government had already allocated €25 million to other sports organisations throughout the country.

“One in four people have diabetes in this country,” he said, pointing to “a serious problem in this country”.

“The more that we can get people involved in sport, the more it will be good for society and for the country.”

The respective chief executives of the three main sports, Páraic Duffy of the GAA, John Delaney of the FAI, and Philip Browne from the IRFU, detailed the progress made in recent years and their plans for this year.

Programmes
Browne outlined how yesterday's grant of €2.25 million ("which allows us to do things which otherwise we would not be allowed to do") will be supplemented by the IRFU's annual investment of €10 million on the domestic-amateur game. Of this, 73 per cent is spent on participation programmes, and 27 per cent on age-grade teams and the women's national team. This is spent on regional development officers, club support programmes, the schools of Ireland programme, insurance support, coach education, referee education, schools and the clubs' conditioning programme and the age-grade community development programme.

Browne cited the growth in mini-youth rugby (to 60,000 participants), schools rugby (over 700 teams playing 14,000 games per year) and social rugby, while 63 per cent of rugby clubs now have women’s sections, as well as community initiatives.

As well as the employment of 41 full-time development officers and 71 “seasonal staff”, coaching programmes had meant 14,000-plus accredited coaches have completed IRFU coaching courses since 2003, along with 2,400 qualified referees.

Duffy pointed to the GAA’s 38,000 qualified coaches, 214 regional development personnel, and 330,000-plus players across 2,000 clubs.

He described the GAA’s Cúl Camps for girls and boys aged between six and 13 as a big success, with 85 per cent of primary schools having completed eight-week Go Games coaching programmes, which amounted to 81,275 participants, an increase of 5,000 on 2011 figures.

Delaney gave what he admitted was a “snapshot” of how the FAI spent the Government funding, which he said the FAI supplemented with an investment of €10 million.

The examples he cited were women's football, FAI summer soccer camps, coaching certificates to prisoners, "nite leagues" and primary school and disability programmes, the latter with 3,500 participants, which will see the FAI host the European Championship finals in 2014. "Without sports council money we couldn't do this."

Bigger allocation
Speaking subsequently to the print media, Browne also laughed off any suggestions that the IRFU was in any way begrudging of the GAA's slightly bigger allocation.

“The bottom line is that the GAA is the biggest sporting organisation in the country, and I think the work they do is great work.

“So we’re very grateful to the ISC for the funding we’ve got, and I think at the end of the day I’m quite happy with what we have, and the GAA and FAI deserve all that they get because of the good work that they do,” he said.