ISC funding slashing recommended in An Bord Snip's report

Sparks

The Sindo sums it up fairly well:

Treacy has hard decisions to make
By Alan Ruddock
Sunday July 19 2009

A difficult year for John Treacy, the chief executive of the Irish Sports Council, became an horrendous one last week with the publication of Colm McCarthy's report on how the government could achieve multi-billion euro savings.

Given the scale of the cuts that McCarthy has identified, sport's fate drew little attention. He has proposed an almost €18m reduction in funding to Treacy's ISC and a €16m cut for the Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund -- mere drops in his €5.3bn ocean, but massive in the context of the current funding of sport.

The scale of the cuts -- and the near certainty that they will be implemented, because no one is going to cut sport much slack when social welfare payments are under threat -- will force a radical rethink of the ISC's strategy.

McCarthy said that the ISC "must achieve efficiencies by prioritising programmes [and] could also achieve savings by reducing the scale of funding allocations to the national sporting governing bodies. At present, [it] provides funding to approximately 60 such bodies . . . there is a need to prioritise among these organisations. On this basis, [An Bord Snip] proposes savings of €17.7m in the 2009 allocation of €52m."

For that, some really hard decisions have to be made. The ISC's big ticket items are its grants to the sports governing bodies (€14m in 2007, of which €3m went to Special Olympics); high performance grants (€6.5m); the carding scheme for athletes (€2.2m); local sports partnerships (€4.5m); investment in designated areas (€11m); the national coaching centre (€2m) and women's participation in sport (€2.5m). All worthy, no doubt, but all under the microscope now.

The problem for Treacy, however, goes far deeper than simply choosing who to fund and who to cut. Encouraging participation in sport is one of the ISC's key roles, yet the measurement of participation only started in earnest last year. The ISC's failure to put in place reliable measurement procedures from its inception means it will be virtually impossible for Treacy and his team to make informed decisions about which funding to cut and which to keep. How effective, for example, was the €2.5m spent on women's participation? Did the €11m spent on designated areas provide value for money?

For individual sports, the problem will be more acute because their organisations have grown accustomed to relatively generous funding and have been encouraged to get more professional in their administration. Their cost bases are higher now than they have ever been precisely because they have been on the receiving end of taxpayers' money, and they will be devastated by its removal.

The easy days of handing out ever increasing amounts of money are at an end and now the ISC is in the business of making choices. Given the new rigour that McCarthy's report should bring to the public sector, those choices will need to be based on good evidence. Schemes that demonstrably improve participation deserve support, just as those sports which deliver high performance success should be rewarded.

The new environment means this summer's appointments to the ISC board -- there are seven vacancies -- are critical. The new board needs smart, independent-minded people who are not beholden to any sporting lobby. They need to be able to formulate, quickly, a new strategy for the ISC that allows it to fulfil its remit on a diminished diet of state funding.

As for the once powerful horse racing lobby, the options are simpler. It must accept its glory days were the result of Charlie McCreevy's generosity, not strict need.

The Department doesn't get off either - the report calls for the future of the Department of Sport to be disbanded and rolled into the Department of Education and for Sports Campus Ireland to be closed down.

Bananaman

Shooting should wash its own face with regard to funding

We should not be doing an Oliver on it and asking 'Please Sir, can I have some more [SCRAPS]'

If the Dept. of Fun is abolished - as is also a possibility - or the ISC is given a bag of Oranges for a budget next year it should make no difference at all to the shooting sports.

People have always seemed to seek funding from the state or from their umbrella organisations in an effort to validate their existence.
Codswallop if you ask me.

Just charge adequate entry to clubs, ranges and matches to fund them.

The shooting bodies will fight each other over a couple of grand - petty - I've spent that in a weekend of decent competition.

It's all spent on membership of yet more organisations whose sole purpose in life seems to be to get money to affiliate with yet more organsations.

Simply pass the hat around at the AGMto fund the membership of
'Tthe World body of World bodies who affiliate with other world bodies'
if you don't get enough then don't affiliate as the membership obviously don't want it.

B'Man

rrpc

Bananaman wrote: »

Shooting should wash its own face with regard to funding

We should not be doing an Oliver on it and asking 'Please Sir, can I have some more [SCRAPS]'

Every sport can make a claim that their sport benefits the exchequer through direct and indirect taxes and shooting is no different. However, you forget that shooting is one of the few (if any) sports that actually contributes to the exchequer directly for the use of its equipment.

An estimated €6 million every year goes in for licence fees. Every other licence fee in this state goes towards funding the licencees directly or indirectly: RTE get the TV licence, the local authorities get the driving licence fee for roads and the dog licence funds the dog pounds etc.

If the Dept. of Fun is abolished - as is also a possibility - or the ISC is given a bag of Oranges for a budget next year it should make no difference at all to the shooting sports.

Here I agree with you because as far as I'm concerned, the paltry €140k the shooting sports get in relation to the €6 million they put in is an insult, although the shotgun sports could well miss the €100k they get for high performance.

People have always seemed to seek funding from the state or from their umbrella organisations in an effort to validate their existence.
Codswallop if you ask me.

That would be the IRFU, the GAA, FAI, Swim Ireland, Athletics and the Olympic Council of Ireland etc. etc.

Simply pass the hat around at the AGMto fund the membership of
'Tthe World body of World bodies who affiliate with other world bodies'
if you don't get enough then don't affiliate as the membership obviously don't want it.

Now you're being funny . But if your sport can't justify being a member of a world body to its members then I absolutely agree. There's obviously no benefit to them in such membership.

Bananaman

rrpc wrote: »

But if your sport

That'd be OUR sport

B'Man

rrpc

Bananaman wrote: »

That'd be OUR sport

B'Man

Fair enough, I didn't know we were in the same world body.