Irish Sports Council announces Core Grant levels

Sparks

From the Irish Sports Council website:

Irish Sports Council Allocates €7.7 million in 2006 Grants to Sports Bodies

The Irish Sports Council today (January 26th) announced the core grants for the National Governing Bodies (NGB) of sport in Ireland. 59 sports will receive a total of €7.7 million. This represents a 10% increase for the sports this year in 2006, with €7 million allocated to core grants in 2005.

The Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, Mr John O’Donoghue TD, made the formal announcement at a special reception in Dublin for representatives of the governing bodies. During his speech the Minister expressed his appreciation for the contribution of the organisations to Irish sporting life and highlighted the year-on-year increases in funding since 1999.

The core activities covered by the grants include administration of the sports, the employment of professional staff, coach development and assorted development activities. For certain sports it may also include hosting events and programmes aimed at increasing participation.

Sport continues to rely on voluntary effort, with 400,000 adults acting as volunteers in sport each year. However, professional staff must augment that effort in the governing bodies with many organisations now having full time professional Chief Executives working with coaches, development officers and administrative staff. Currently there are 194 full time and 38 part time staff employed by the sports eligible under the this grant scheme.

In addition to the €7.7 million announced today a package of high performance supports for Focus Sports and individual elite athletes will be announced in early February. Governing bodies will also benefit under the Women in Sport initiative, worth €2.5 million, to be allocated later in 2006.

Also covered in the Irish Independent and elsewhere.

Full list of grant allocations here. Here's what we got:

Body 2005 2006
Irish Clay Pigeon Shooting Association € 0 €0 Allocation still outstanding
Shooting SportsAssociation of Ireland € 25,048 €30,547

That grant to the NRPAI is up by 22% on last year when the average rise was 10% - good news for some. The money will now be split three ways (the Pony Club is usually funded through the Equestrian Federation, who got approximately €330,000), though not always on an even split as each NGB must apply for its grant the previous year citing projects and a breakdown of proposed spending. To be honest, it's not a lot of money and doesn't go very far; for example, the upcoming trip to Bisley that WTSC is doing costs on the order of €6000 or more. It'd be interesting to know how our money is now going to be spent!

rrpc

As far as I know, the NTSA are in for electronic targets. Not sure if we got our allocation though.

Sparks

Surely that'd be through the Capital Grants scheme rrpc, the Core Grants aren't meant to be used for things like that.

rrpc

Try telling that to the Camogie, Handballing, Womens Gaelic football Associations etc. Granted (pun) some of the money is for coaching, but a lot of it is allocated for equipment. I still would like to know what the baton twirlers get their money for

scout

Irish Tug of- War Association € 29,975 €27,100 :eek:

How do they derive the figures? Is it based on the amount of members that the organisations have?

rrpc

Original Psycho wrote:

How do they derive the figures? Is it based on the amount of members that the organisations have?

Oh it's a highly complicated calculation based on the square root of the amount you ask for times the number of voters that are members of the organisation divided by the probability of them being opposition party members times a given constant referred to as 'whateveryourehavingyourself'

Sparks

original_psycho wrote:

How do they derive the figures? Is it based on the amount of members that the organisations have?

RRPC's cynical but sadly highly accurate take aside, the decision process is meant to take into account participation levels, performance levels and the degree of professionalism the NGB shows in its procedures and standards (I'll refrain from making comment here, I suspect it'd be redundant). Unfortunately, the question of returns will creep into it - a sport that brings home an Olympic gold medal will get far more funding. As a result, we now have a few sports that are classed as being "focus" sports and which get the lion's share (boxing, athletics, clay pigeon shooting, etc.).

The thing is, and I don't think that those in head office have grasped this at a gut level yet, the current ISC are a bunch of professionals hired to do a job and they're very serious about not funding sport, but about investing in it; the implied difference being that they want a return and if they don't get it, you don't get the funding!