The County Board Complaints Thread

[Keeks]

Moving back to the Underspend.....Article here (behind a paywall)

Revealed: Dublin’s €23m bonanza – How capital still benefit most from development funding

Thirty per cent of Croke Park’s coaching and games development budget earmarked for counties has been paid to Dublin in the last 17 years.

www.independent.ie

A section of the Article below where I highlight some interest points:

Using figures from 2019 (the last season prior to the Covid pandemic which disrupted activity for two years) the GAA circulated each county with the amount they could expect to receive. Using the same figures and formula we have calculated what these sums are likely to have been.

It would have represented a huge sea change with Dublin’s allocation dropping to €847,067 whereas Cork’s would have increased to €844,067

Rolling out the new system has proved problematic. At a Central Council meeting last March delegates were told the GAA was unable to establish how many people were actually employed by the Association. This was delaying the implementation of the reformed plan

The new system is more centralised with the appointment of provincial and county Heads of Games Development. Arguably the biggest impediment to the roll out is that clubs outside Dublin cannot provide matching funds to employ a GPO. The funding has to come through their county board

However, according to the GAA’s annual report, the new four-year coaching and games funding model has now been rolled out with what were described as “initial funding distribution challenges”

The report says: “A key challenge for counties under the new scheme is that the majority share of the increased grant fund is predicated on a new minimum requirement of 35 per cent local contribution towards each approved coaching officer role

This has resulted in a year one grant underspend of €2.8m with most counties not being able to draw down their new funding allocation. CLG remains committed to investing a minimum of €12m per annum into coaching and games over a four-year period and all counties will be permitted to carry forward any unused grant funding for future use.

Cork look to be the big losers with their underspend on coaching between September 2022 and September 2023 amounting to more than €500,000 according to our calculations

Basically as I see it this is a grant system. You need to have a certain amount of funds yourself before you get the money.

2007-2023 Spending Top 2
Dublin €23,050,062
Cork €3,188,019

 

[Banofie Magpie]

Moving back to the Underspend.....Article here (behind a paywall)

Revealed: Dublin’s €23m bonanza – How capital still benefit most from development funding

Thirty per cent of Croke Park’s coaching and games development budget earmarked for counties has been paid to Dublin in the last 17 years.

www.independent.ie

A section of the Article below where I highlight some interest points:



Basically as I see it this is a grant system. You need to have a certain amount of funds yourself before you get the money.

There is a fella going round here spreading lies. Take no notice.
No way could Cork have underspent €500,000 of one years coaching budget when they received a total of just €3.1m in 17 years, an average of €182,000 per year or just €700/club

 

[Keeks]

There is a fella going round here spreading lies. Take no notice.
No way could Cork have underspent €500,000 of one years coaching budget when they received a total of just €3.1m in 17 years, an average of €182,000 per year or just €700/club

I don't think there is lies here.....the way I would read it is if Cork have spent €175k (35%) then they could have drawn got another €500k

But I think to do that you have to have a plan in place on where to spend it....can't just put it in the bank account and collect interest.

And there lies the problem.....either no money or no plan...most likely both

 

[Grasshopper]

And that's valid reply but why was half a million underspent on coaching and development in the last fiscal years when people have already be raising concerns with development and the structures etc?
This is the Croke Park coaching budget too that Cork GAA should not be pocketing or putting towards the debt.

My understanding is that the funds weren't drawn down as the new GDA's that are related to most of that funding were only hired as of Jan 1 2024, roles could only be advertised once the funding was approved so there was a lag, but from FY24 forward the full amount c.a. 800k will be drawn down, and there is another Munster council grant available for urban areas on top of that

 

[peopleluas]

In fairness to clubs, they are run nearly exclusively by volunteers.
Comparing them to the CEO of a multi million euro organisation, with a huge pool of staff is unfair and not in any way related.

Hi @Reservedcitizen, I had considered your point before I posted. It is a point worth considering. Having considered it, here's why I believed the comparison (albeit on a completely different scale) both fair and related:

The burden of successful-application for the energy grant last year was so incredibly miniscule that something like half the clubs country-wide (I'm going on memory - it could be 40% and not half - but this is the order of magnitude) basically left money on the table uncollected. In our club (of all volunteers), the burden was (a) noticing the unmissable prompt in Foireann and 10 mins reading what was required, (b) 1 minute agreeing at the committee, (c) 15 mins for the treasurer to download the bank statements as evidence and send them to me, (d) 20 mins for me to do a calculation, fill in, and submit the form. We are a small club with very low energy costs relative to the average club because we have been behind in facilities development (we're working on that) - but we still got just under €500.

So then if you take the effort in our club for that, and multiply by a 1,000, you'd get in rough figures (rounded for ease of mental calculation) 6 staff-months. I'd expect that the requirements for collection of €500,000 by a county board, in terms of application process and employment of GDAs or whatever, would be much greater than that 6 staff months in total.

And thus I consider the comparison at least relevant, in that an awful lot of clubs left much-easier-money-for-jam on the table, and we hear almost nothing about that.

This is not to disregard the reporting that Cork left €500,000 on the table. I read with interest the discussion on that, and yes if at all possible we want to be getting everything we can get.

 

[Banofie Magpie]

It would be good if the original poster could put up the GAA account of this.
I can’t find the original Sunday World article either.
No point in relying on what Lemon Spillane has to say about Cork football imo. Losing to Cork for all those years in the 2nd half of his career and being held scoreless by Cahalane for so many years is still eating him up

 

[Keeks]

It would be good if the original poster could put up the GAA account of this.
I can’t find the original Sunday World article either.
No point in relying on what Lemon Spillane has to say about Cork football imo. Losing to Cork for all those years in the 2nd half of his career and being held scoreless by Cahalane for so many years is still eating him up

And again, its not Spillane that pulled the data, it was Sean McGoldrick.
You can find the article in the Sunday Independent....link already provided and you replayed to that comment.
I have already provided the more important part of the article.

McGoldrick has written quite a bit about this topic over the last few years.

Sunday World And independent basically the same papers......Same articles appear in both

 

[Banofie Magpie]

And again, its not Spillane that pulled the data, it was Sean McGoldrick.
You can find the article in the Sunday Independent....link already provided and you replayed to that comment.
I have already provided the more important part of the article.

McGoldrick has written quite a bit about this topic over the last few years.

Sunday World And independent basically the same papers......Same articles appear in both

No beef brother. Indo is behind their paywall and I’m not giving them the 70cents a week.

Thank you for the section you extracted and posted. That info is very helpful and it’s confirms what others and I suspected here. The €500k is a 66% contribution towards the hiring of GDAs. Cork have to put up €250k themselves first and have the employees in place to draw the central funding. Most counties were unable to draw the funding apparently.
New GDAs started in January and funding will then flow,
Cork was picked out by the paper because Cork are by far the largest beneficiary of the new coaching grant scheme. The new scheme is a fairer distribution of central funds and is based on the number of clubs/registered players in a county and as a result Corks annual benefit has gone up by about €500k to about €800k and Dublins has dropped €500k to around the same amount as Cork.

 

[Thehighroad]

CBC, Midleton, Rochestown, coachford, colmans, Charleville, Bandon. Mon(Gael scol?). What other schools would be suitable for hurling academies.

 

[Banofie Magpie]

CBC, Midleton, Rochestown, coachford, colmans, Charleville, Bandon. Mon(Gael scol?). What other schools would be suitable for hurling academies.

Good calls I’d say.
It would depend on what the overall approach would be. I’d assume they’d have to have a geographical spread also.
Duhallow might have Kanturk- a slower burner.
Another one on the western side of the city?