Taoiseach’s Mayo village cycling club hits jackpot with Lottery grant

Jawgap

Beasty wrote: »

I still prefer real and verified facts over pure speculation

Ok, well for a start plenty of convictions have gone through on circumstantial evidence alone, and if only deal in real and verified facts you probably think Bertie was hard done by for winning a few quid on the geegees;)

The facts are a club in the Taoiseach's constituency (and Michael Ring's) was awarded a Department of Health grant of €20,000 from a fund described thus

Department of Health operates a National Lottery Discretionary fund under which we can provide once-off grants to organisations for the provision of health related services. The fund is aimed at community groups and voluntary organisations operating in Ireland providing health services to specific client groups (like people with an intellectual and/or physical disability), providing information and support for various disabilities and illnesses or groups with a specific interest (like providing equipment for hospitals, for example).

No other sports club appears to have been awarded a grant from the same fund in 2016......no other cycling club has ever been awarded a grant from that fund (there's one example of a swimming club that operates a disabled team getting €1,500, but there may be other examples).......

......the conditions of the scheme are clear about who makes the final decision about grants.....

Q. Who decides when an application will be approved for funding?
A. All applications are made available to the Minister who is the only person who can approve a grant.

So, there's the facts - make of them what you will. Given the normal course of doing politics in this country I'm quite sure this was all dealt with properly and next year we'll see other sports clubs getting five figure grants from the same fund, which was only €3.56m so €20k in that context is not insignificant.

Lumen

Beasty wrote: »

I still prefer real and verified facts over pure speculation

But in reality, facts don't just neatly present themselves for assessment. They are jealously guarded by those who fear they will be judged harshly. Like Donald Trump's tax returns, or Wiggo's TUEs, or exactly what happens to an Irish olympic ticket.

Sometimes you have to throw a bunch of sh^t around to force the facts to be revealed. It's a messy world.

magicbastarder

Beasty wrote: »

So your claim of fact may equally be fiction

To be clear, as I've already posted I am certainly not in possession of the full facts here. Differing interpretations have been made in this thread resulting in different conclusions being drawn. I would personally reserve any judgment in the absence of verified "facts"

fair enough; i took the text from the stickybottle article as fact. but that does not change the fact (this time used without condition) that the information available raises questions that need to be answered.

tomasrojo

Jawgap wrote: »

"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk."

Love that quote.

morana

is islandeady cg affiliated to Cycling Ireland?

Beasty

morana wrote: »

is islandeady cg affiliated to Cycling Ireland?

They are on the CI Club Locator page

Jawgap

Deedsie wrote: »

To me, if the money is used to promote cycling or for a cycling based health campaign like "cycle against suicide" or to try get new members to join etc then I have very little problem with this.

If however this money is used to benefit the members of the club in a non cycling way, new dishwashers all round for the committee then it is corruption.

It's not the right way for grants to be distributed but I'd challenge anyone here to name the constituency they come from and look at what their own local politicians have provided for their area before attacking the Taoiseach or Islandeady cycling club.

So it's not right, but it is right because everyone is doing it.......

I kind of suspected that most people who were 'ok' with this were ok with it because people hope or anticipate that some day the skewed system will be unfair in a way that's unfair in their favour!

In summary, people are ok with the system because you never know someday your constituency may have a minister who can skew things in your favour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0TDGSZDZhM

It's a tiny example to be sure, but why even have a system of grant applications? Why even go through the charade - just give each minister or TD a pot of money they can dispense at their discretion to causes they deem worthy.

Could the politician who sorted it out for them at least have gone through the charade of getting it from the "Development of Sport & Recreational Sports Facilities" fund - it's not like projects drawing from the health fund are sitting there wondering how to spend all that money that gets thrown at them :rolleyes:

Chuchote

Deedsie wrote: »

It's not the right way for grants to be distributed but I'd challenge anyone here to name the constituency they come from and look at what their own local politicians have provided for their area before attacking the Taoiseach or Islandeady cycling club.

Dublin South Central, or as it's known in political circles, the Dublin South Central Soviet.

Jawgap

Deedsie wrote: »

I guess I don't want to be a hypocrite, I have benefitted from local politicians targeting their own area for investment etc...

It's not right, I don't disagree there. I am just being practical though. In an ideal world Ireland will bring in a list system and the parish pump politics will end.

Not gonna get overly excited over €20000, were you as excited about the Nama scandal? That cost the state 100's of millions.

No, no one is going to get excited about this in the same way they do about Nama or whatever.....and I doubt it's even close to being the worst example of political interference in the award of grants in 2016, but it seems to be one of the more glaring and obvious examples, the others are just better hidden.....

......but it's always worth remembering that there are people at the end of a lot of these processes.

The club has benefitted - good luck to them and their members (and future members) and hopefully the money will generate more intrinsic value for the club than its face value.

On the other hand, the fact they got it means someone else didn't - someone who might have had a better, more worthy claim on the grant and who may have put a lot of effort into preparing their bid etc - but they didn't get it because they were in the 'wrong' constituency or didn't have someone to guide them on the inside track. In my view, that's simply wrong and the fact it happens more often than we care to admit doesn't make it right.

Also, focusing in on cycling - can other clubs now access this Dept of Health fund? Being 'parochial' about it should a cycling club (or rugby club, or GAA club etc) be able to apply to this fund and the Sports Fund? Equally, how would sports clubs feel if projects that should rightly draw on other funds started getting awards from the sports funds? What if, for example, they blew the sports fund out of the water to fund a new sail training vessel instead of just using the money allocated through the National Lottery to the Youth Sail Training Scheme? Given it's an activity that is kind of related to sport, in the way a cycling club is kind of related to health?

As an aside, I wonder if the availability of the Department of Health fund for sports clubs (including cycling clubs) to access wasn't a huge missed opportunity for certain clubs in NCD when 'Bottler' was Minister for Health....

Q. Who decides when an application will be approved for funding?
A. All applications are made available to the Minister who is the only person who can approve a grant.

But if we're going down this route then let's do it properly - divide the funds up geographically and assign them to local TDs to whom applications can be sent - give the TDs some broad guidelines about who they cannot give the money to and let them away.

It's got to be more efficient than the current charade?

Lumen

Jawgap wrote: »

But if we're going down this route then let's do it properly - divide the funds up geographically and assign them to local TDs to whom applications can be sent - give the TDs some broad guidelines about who they cannot give the money to and let them away.

All the Kerry money would go to darts and pool clubs.

Jawgap

Lumen wrote: »

All the Kerry money would go to darts and pool clubs.

.....and roads (which might be good for cycling on).....

Tombo2001

Wow....

I assumed that it was 1 of 120 SPORTS CLUBS that received grants.

But no.....its the ONLY sports club to receive a grant, alongside the various hospices, defibrillator groups, addiction counselling services etc.

If you knew nothing about the Taoiseach being a member, or if the Taoiseach wasn't a member, then it would lets say not at all be clear why of all the sports clubs in Ireland to be the only one to receive a grant, that the sports club in question be a tiny cycling club in Mayo........

And why this sports club is so special that you fund it ahead of say a hospice or the rape crisis centre.

There must be at least 1000 sports clubs in Ireland with more members.

Cycling is not a sport that requires communal facilities - e.g. a boat, or a football pitch, or a swimming pool, or a badminton court.....that can be shared out within the community....

Unless of course Islandeady is building a Velodrome.

Also interesting that Mayo received 6.3% of the funding in question, with 2.3% of the national population.

Jawgap

Deedsie wrote: »

Tralee Bypass, Castleisland bypass, Dingle harbour were all pushed through by political representatives.

Good for them.....

.....I wonder how many dangerous stretches of road were left longer than necessary because money was diverted so the local deputy could proclaim "I fixed de road" :rolleyes:

Maybe CI need to start agitating for the velodrome to be built in Kilgarvan......

Tombo2001

Also worth giving special mention to Glen Neiphin Mens Shed, Mayo - which received €30k........

Organisation with no website and 129 likes on its Facebook page. (To give that some context, the café down the road from my house has 3400 likes).

As opposed to the National Womens Council of Ireland which received €24k......

OleRodrigo

No matter who is awarded public funds, somebody will always pipe up with isn't so and so more deserving. And whoever gets the money better make sure they have a respectable number of facebook likes !

If the process of receiving a grant is fair then that's all that matters, surely ?. Maybe they were the only ones who filled out the application correctly ? Maybe the local Mayo TD said to his constituents ' Lads, make sure the form is filled out properly '..and that was enough, because he knew most applicants didn't.

I'm sure Jawgap can regale us with stories of applications binned because a minor detail was omitted.

Benign bureaucracy is a hell of a thing

magicbastarder

was that the only grant the national women's council received?

Jawgap

OleRodrigo wrote: »

No matter who is awarded public funds, somebody will always pipe up with isn't so and so more deserving. And whoever gets the money better make sure they have a respectable number of facebook likes !

If the process of receiving a grant is fair then that's all that matters, surely ?. Maybe they were the only ones who filled out the application correctly ? Maybe the local Mayo TD said to his constituents ' Lads, make sure the form is filled out properly '..and that was enough, because he knew most applicants didn't.

I'm sure Jawgap can regale us with stories of applications binned because a minor detail was omitted.

Benign bureaucracy is a hell of a thing

Point being this grant application drew from the health pot!

Does this mean that other sports clubs, including cycling clubs, can draw from this pot next year? And if they can draw from it in 2016 - why couldn't they draw from it in 2014, or 2013, or 2012 etc

Does it also mean that other people / groups can claim from the sports monies simply because their grant application contains some loose association with sport, activity or movement? I wonder if people would be so understanding if the sports fund was plundered to pay for a dance group or bursaries for students studying sports science or a sculpture with a sporting theme etc

.....and no, it was very difficult to get an application binned where I worked - only if you couldn't provide something like a tax clearance cert or get enough quotes in (for capital or equipment) on time was something excluded - when applications came in (admittedly it had nothing to do with sports or health) if they were somehow deficient you'd be on to the sender to let them know there was a problem and what they needed to do to rectify it before the closing date. Fatal exceptions aside, applications still went through but would be scored appropriately if information was missing.

ford2600

Tombo2001 wrote: »

Also worth giving special mention to Glen Neiphin Mens Shed, Mayo - which received €30k........

Organisation with no website and 129 likes on its Facebook page. (To give that some context, the café down the road from my house has 3400 likes).

As opposed to the National Womens Council of Ireland which received €24k......

Have you look at NWCI financial statements, freely available on their website; their total grants are a lot more than 24k as you'd expect.

While you have Google going, check out suicide statistics and gender/age/location distribution. Maybe giving socially isolated men a meeting place separate for pub, where they can learn a skill, etc could be for the greater good?

It might be a waste of money, but maybe check them out before making a half arsed comparison.

Second time on Internet so go easy...

Jawgap

Deedsie wrote: »

Fantastic projects, each one. The darts and pool halls comment was bizarre. Is Kerry not entitled to infrastructure improvements, probably our second most popular tourist county. Every motorway in Ireland the same credit was taken from local politicians.

Advocate for a list system if you don't like the current setup.

....it's not that anywhere is not entitled to its fair share of the public pot - but the distribution should be based on need and value, not the 'cute hoorism' of the local TD.

.....and ok, if that's acceptable and we're happy to have a system based on clientelism then at least let it be transparent so everyone knows which money is up for grabs so we can all get on to our TDs, councillors etc to make sure our areas, our clubs etc get their 'fair' share.

Btw, Kerry isn't the second most popular tourist county - it's 4th both in terms of visitors and spend.....

Visitors....
Dublin: 4,938,000
Cork: 1,449,000
Galway: 1,354,000
Kerry: 1,026,000

Tourist spend
Dublin: €1,726m
Cork: €558m
Galway: €475m
Kerry: €234m

(source: Fáilte Ireland's Survey of Overseas Travellers 2015)

On a per capita basis Kerry Co Co spends 33% more on roads than Dublin City, 250% more than Fingal, 16% more than Galway Co Co and 17% more than Cork Co Co (source: Publicpolicy.ie)

It also has a significantly larger budget on a per capita basis than the other counties listed above with the exception of Dublin.

Tombo2001

ford2600 wrote: »

Have you look at NWCI financial statements, freely available on their website; their total grants are a lot more than 24k as you'd expect.

While you have Google going, check out suicide statistics and gender/age/location distribution. Maybe giving socially isolated men a meeting place separate for pub, where they can learn a skill, etc could be for the greater good?

It might be a waste of money, but maybe check them out before making a half arsed comparison.

Second time on Internet so go easy...

If its such a good idea, why are only 3 mens sheds in the country funded, and the other two at €5k rather than €30k.

And you are bringing up suicide statistics to explain this? Anything else you want to throw in?

Beasty

Jawgap wrote: »

Point being this grant application drew from the health pot!

Does this mean that other sports clubs, including cycling clubs, can draw from this pot next year?

Actually a few of my clubmates* could do with losing 1 and a half stone. Think we may have the basis for an application;)


*I could also, but alas I don't think I could argue for the State to fund more exercise equipment for me given the current state of my "facilities"

Jawgap

Beasty wrote: »

Actually a few of my clubmates* could do with losing 1 and a half stone. Think we may have the basis for an application;)


*I could also, but alas I don't think I could argue for the State to fund more exercise equipment for me given the current state of my "facilities"

your boat has sailed!!

You should've got in when "Bottler" was the Minister - if Balbriggan could get a PCC then there's no reason why a few WattBikes couldn't have been ordered for a "satellite facility" at the end of your garden

Tombo2001

To continue on the Mens Shed theme,

There have been six mens sheds funded to date.

4 of those in Dublin, Louth etc have been funded at 1k to 5k amounts.

Castlebar was funded for 20k last year, Glen Neiphin (Mayo) for 30k this year.

Doesn't suggest anything untoward. Its just anomalous.

ford2600

Tombo2001 wrote: »

And you are bringing up suicide statistics to explain this? Anything else you want to throw in?

It's a health grant.

In terms of groups and mental health, isolated males are a high risk group.

Spending health allocated money on such a group to reduce isolation could be beneficial to society at large, and therby a good spending of "public" money

Maybe ask the association itself why 30k was received in one location and 4k in another. i.e. if it smells so dodgy to you maybe do a little homework before throwing around loose suggestions of wrongdoing. Contact details are freely available. People only get one name.

In my experience of lotto applications they require a lot of detail on why funding is required, so I'm sure organization will have that detail to hand. Perhaps your experience has been different.

Lumen

Deedsie wrote: »

The darts and pool halls comment was bizarre. Is Kerry not entitled to infrastructure improvements, probably our second most popular tourist county. Every motorway in Ireland the same credit was taken from local politicians.

For the avoidance of doubt, I was implying that if Kerry TDs got to decide where sports funding was allocated they'd choose sports that could be played in the pubs that they own.

Tombo2001

ford2600 wrote: »

It's a health grant.

In terms of groups and mental health, isolated males are a high risk group.

Spending health allocated money on such a group to reduce isolation could be beneficial to society at large, and therby a good spending of "public" money

Maybe ask the association itself why 30k was received in one location and 4k in another. i.e. if it smells so dodgy to you maybe do a little homework before throwing around loose suggestions of wrongdoing. Contact details are freely available. People only get one name.

In my experience of lotto applications they require a lot of detail on why funding is required, so I'm sure organization will have that detail to hand. Perhaps your experience has been different.

To be absolutely clear - I have not suggested in anyway that there has been wrongdoing.

In the post I made immediately prior to this, I specifically said "Doesn't suggest anything untoward".

And I mean that - I have absolutely no doubt that the people in the cycling club, and the people in the mens sheds club, went about it the right and proper way. And to add to that, I'd be shocked really, I mean that genuinely, if there was any political interference.

So what am I suggesting then.

All I'm referring to is facts.

It is anomalous that only one sports club in the entire country has been selected for this grant; and that this one sports club is a very small sports club with low membership, and is in a sport that is not intensive with regard to facilities requirements (equipment yes, but usually equipment is owned by individual members).

And then looking at, in the same region is there anything else that's anomalous.

yes, the grant rate for that county is more than double the average grant rate of other counties, on a per head basis.

And of the other grants received in that county, is there anything else anomalous?

Yes two Mens Sheds clubs this year and last year have between them claimed are claiming a grant amount that is 4 times larger than grants to all other Mens Sheds clubs in the country put together, according to the releases I've seen for the past three years.

So what you say?

So what nothing.

I am not saying there is anything behind it.

You are going on about suicide statistics, to contradict me. You are saying its a health grant, isolated males are a vulnerable group.

But I haven't tried to explain it in the first place. I could......maybe the mens shed clubs have major projects going? I don't know. I have no doubt they have excellent people associated with them, who put huge work in in their local community. I'm not trying to bad mouth them, or to second guess it.

I am just saying its anomalous. Not enough to suggest a trend, or to be evidence of anything, but it just stands out a bit.

Wishbone Ash

Jawgap wrote: »

...In summary, people are ok with the system because you never know someday your constituency may have a minister who can skew things in your favour.....

In an ideal world it shouldn't happen but I will put up my hand and say that if I was in a difficult situation, such as having a child with a disability which required house renovations, and someone in public office was able to expedite the process, I wouldn't be turning them down.

(PS - I am in no way suggesting that there was anything underhand in the cycling club referred to in this thread).

Tombo2001

CramCycle wrote: »

Shock f*cin horror. Cycling club with members who dared to try and use a legitimate but probably not often used by cycling clubs route to funding succeeded. Truth is there are probably very few cycling clubs who tried this route before. Hopefully it will inspire some to try it out.

Maybe an taoisigh and his staff recommended it as a route, certainly does not make them guilty of anything. I am only annoyed that I never thought of it as I know several GAA clubs who have been successful. It just never occurred to me that it would be worth pursuing. I certainly will push my club to look athrough it next year.

As a follow on, I'd agree with the above.

Jawgap

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

In an ideal world it shouldn't happen but I will put up my hand and say that if I was in a difficult situation, such as having a child with a disability which required house renovations, and someone in public office was able to expedite the process, I wouldn't be turning them down.

(PS - I am in no way suggesting that there was anything underhand in the cycling club referred to in this thread).

Fair enough, but what if you found out that the Disabled Person Grant (which previously would've covered such renovations, that may have changed) money was also being used to something else, such as road maintenance on the local hospital site?

Lusk_Doyle

Deedsie wrote: »

Sorry, I picked that up wrong... I thought you meant Kerry representatives waste the funds provided to them. The rural v Urban thing gets my back up a bit.

You can't get more rural than Lumen. He's all about the ambrosia...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epbERMTlzGQ