Cycling Ireland membership is a complete rip off- Discuss

This is an excellent summary; excellent points that have been made many times, almost ad nauseum, typically responding to the regular leisure cyclist whinge about money. I think much of the frustration on the issue is misdirected towards the competitive aspects of cycling when in fact the issue is more of an administrative and management of funds question. Its the CI mindset and the ongoing support for these structures that keeps things the way they are.

I think there needs to be a critical mass of non-competitive cyclists who genuinely want change to advocate successfully for a quasi-independent cycling group who get more 'bang for their buck' - then we will really see where their 50 quid goes. Why doesn't this happen? My guess is that the vast majority of leisure cyclists are not actually animated or upset by 50 quid. Admittedly, 20 for ODL can seem steep but people are paying 700 quid to see Taylor Swift these days!

Excellent post.

Does €706k not seem pretty expensive relative to the income amount? Maybe it's just me but I abhor consultancy fees and not based on the latest RTE affair. I've seen eye watering sums of money wasted on consultancy fees over the years.

Genuine question. Do I understand it correctly that some of the leisure license free goes to support the racing crew?

Great summary Derek.

Cycling Ireland seems to be turning into what Motorcycling Ireland became.

The only thing I can say in favour of any GAA Club is that you can visit their Pitch/Field, you can see changing facilities, you can see a clubhouse. A Cycling Club, yarra sure it's a tuesday the club meets at Jimjo's old post office for a spin.. If it's sunday, well then they meet outside the Spar..

As a whole, a big issue for me is the fact that cycling clubs are invisible to the public, invisible for funding, and completely intangible. So you can feel that right your €50 Gaa Fee keeps the lights on, the grass cut, jerseys for the youths etc.

I can only think of one club that has it's own clubhouse.

Yes, Bray.

I'd forgotten about Islandeady. No doubt 'The Ringer' helped smooth the way there!

Underage and Ladies teams generally get to use the main pitch for matches at my GAA club, but are routinely dumped out of the new dressing rooms for the men's teams. A bit like school "voluntary" contributions, there's an expectation that any and every fund raising initiative is financially supported (even if it seems most of the money goes to the senior men's team).

The height of the additional expectation above my annual subs for my cycling club is that I marshal at one of the two open races. My club does have an active leisure section, which is supported through club funds. This is a fairly recent development - it needed the leisure members to support and get active. The club have coaches, who are more active with the leisure side with skills advice than with the racing members.

I know a few groups that act as de facto clubs* (jersey's, regular meet points etc) - which is all fine when all is going well, but I do wonder (given our litigious society) how they'd fair if there's an incident.

*One I know is made up of CI and/or TI members of various clubs, so would assume ok, but another one has no affiliations afaik.

Our club holds a sportive for local charities so when CI upped the one day licence fee by €10 we dropped the reg fee by €10 so the total fee remains the same for the cyclist this year.

But it's the charities that loose in all this, is there a way to run and insure a sportive without CI ???

Or register with the free CI community bike rides scheme and do it as a solo ride, which includes insurance.