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Michael Foley has a piece on Kingspan
Should Cavan GAA reassess their long-standing links with Kingspan?MICHAEL FOLEYThe Grenfell inquiry report has exposed the insulation firm’s ‘deeply entrenched and persistent dishonesty’. Do they still have a place in Irish sport?
Kingspan first came on board as sponsors of Cavan GAA back in 1995 with their home venue soon having its name changed to the Kingspan Breffni ParkMichael FoleySunday September 15 2024, 12.01am BST, The Sunday TimesShareBefore a single moment is spent considering Kingspan’s future as a prominent brand in the landscape of Irish sport following the savaging of the firm’s reputation and business practices in the mammoth report published last week on the Grenfell Tower fire, the stories of the 72 victims who died that night must always be placed at the centre of any conversation on Grenfell, like a lit candle.
Their story is always the story. Read the carefully curated details of their final hours, and nothing about Grenfell or Kingspan looks and feels the same again. Flick through the pages and pause at the door of Flat 113 where eight neighbours gathered to escape the fumes seeping into their own homes.
Rosemary Oyewole lived there with Oluwaseun Talabi and their daughter. Denis Murphy had been moved by firefighters to join them. Omar Alhaj Ali was there with his brother Mohamed. Zainab Deen was holding her two-year-old son Jeremiah.
They retreated to the bedroom where the air was clearest. Mohamed sat on the edge of the bed reading his Qu’ran. Murphy was beside him, bent over and struggling for breath. Talabi tried to fashion a rope using bedsheets and thought about abseiling from the fourteenth floor with his daughter tied to his back. All of them were on their mobile phones ringing emergency services, family and friends.
At one point the bedroom door flew open. Oyewole saw the figure of a firefighter and ran towards him followed by Talabi, their daughter still strapped to his back, and Omar Alhaj Ali. Once they left the tower, they realised the other four were left behind.
What followed captured how absolute chaos turned to catastrophe. Firefighters were directed back to Flat 113 but continually got blocked or diverted elsewhere. A crew manager with the fire brigade was on the line with Zainab as she told him her son was dead. Murphy was still talking to his sister Annie at 2.30am. Then Murphy stopped answering calls. Annie kept calling till 6am, but there was no reply.
Murphy was found in the kitchen, killed by the toxic fumes before the fire engulfed the flat. Mohamed Alhaj Ali was at the foot of the tower the following morning, face-up having leaped from the window. Zainab Deen died with her son.
The remains of Grenfell Tower which claimed the deaths of 72 people in 2017 when toxic fumes engulfed the buildingLEON NEAL/GETTY IMAGESThat is the scale of the trauma their families have carried since, the utter futility of their deaths laid bare by the inquiry chair Martin Moore-Bick last week. “The simple truth is that the deaths that occurred were all avoidable,” he said.
The people who died in Flat 113 were perfect examples of a neighbourhood blessed by layers of culture and personality. Alhaj Ali was a 23-year-old student from Syria. Murphy was second-generation Irish, born in Hammersmith with roots in Limerick. Zainab Deen had come from Sierra Leone and successfully navigated a job interview the day before she died. All of them perished in a lethal monument to deception and utter corporate greed.
Although the report apportions no specific blame for the fire, no agency, firm or individual involved in the rebuilding of Grenfell Tower is spared either. The section of the report devoted to Kingspan is a shocking excoriation of their business practices that created an environment for themselves and other firms to exploit gaps in industry knowledge and sell insulation products wholly unfit for purpose.
For years before the revamping of the Grenfell Tower in 2016 Kingspan had marketed an insulation product called K15 as suitable for use on buildings over 18 metres, even when their own tests told them otherwise. The report accuses Kingspan of being “disingenuous,” creating “a false market…deeply entrenched and persistent dishonesty…in pursuit of commercial gain coupled with a complete disregard for fire safety”. One Kingspan executive described the wording on their brochures as “a bit of a cheat.”
In their statement following the report’s publication Kingspan expended a single line on sympathies to the victims before pointing up the principal accelerant for the fire was not made by Kingspan and insisting the “historical failings that occurred in part of our UK insulation business…were in no way reflective of how we conduct ourselves as a group, then or now. While deeply regrettable, they were not found to be causative of the tragedy.”
Shane Lowry dropped Kingspan as a sponsor last weekBRENDAN MORAN/SPORTSFILEIt was selfish and utterly self-serving, offering no real acceptance of the actual responsibility placed on them by the report itself. Which is where Kingspan’s relationship with Irish sport comes into sharp focus.
The world of sports sponsorship and branding is always dominated by talk of higher things: shared values and passions, synergies and collective energies transformed into memorable experiences. Any time spent with the Grenfell report makes it hard to figure where Kingspan fit into that space now.
Shane Lowry sundered his links with Kingspan last week. Ulster Rugby were already winding down their relationship by the end of this season. But others remain on board.
Johnny Sexton has a connection to them through their Community Startup Programme. Leona Maguire hasn’t said a word. Neither has Cavan GAA.
When it comes to the GAA’s relatively small sponsorship market in particular, look and feel counts for more than it does for professional sports teams. Everything that sells the modern GAA as a commercial brand in a professional environment goes back to what makes the organisation unique in the landscape of modern sport.
The GAA’s value system as an amateur, community-focused organisation is their most precious commodity. Over their years as primary sponsor of Cavan GAA, Kingspan have developed one of the most recognisable brand links in Irish sport. Their name is on Breffni Park. They have sponsored Cavan county teams for nearly 30 years and spent around EUR130,000 annually. That’s from a global company reaching nearly EUR900m in profits last year.
If Cavan stick with Kingspan, it’s clear Kingspan will benefit far more from that endorsement than Cavan into the futureMATT BROWNE/SPORTSFILEThe money involved being that modest, it’s impossible to imagine Cavan couldn’t find another sponsor if required, but that’s not the point either. The question Cavan must address, out of deference to the victims if nothing else, is a moral issue. Do Kingspan still align to those core GAA values? Are they a suitable brand partner to promote social cohesion and everything good the GAA stands for?
If Cavan stick with Kingspan, it’s clear Kingspan will benefit far more from that endorsement than Cavan into the future. When giving evidence to the inquiry Denis Murphy’s son Peter recalled his father’s deep love for sport and how he talked about the football pitches near the base of the tower being removed during the renovations. He worried about future of a nearby boxing club. One club had already been closed down, he told Peter.
It already seemed to Murphy that the revamping of his home was happening at the expense of its people. Money and shiny new facilities are always useful in sport, but none of it makes any difference without the good people and good values that make them work for the benefit of everyone.
The same applies to Cavan GAA and everything that makes it special. Kingspan will always need Cavan more than Cavan need them. But so long as their name remains over the door and on their shirts, it will be hard to visit and not think of Denis Murphy and his neighbours.
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