Comment by John Considine

THIS Government and future governments can't be completely trusted to do the right thing. That is why Europe wants to revise the fiscal rules and make those rules constitutionally binding. That is also why we should want new rules for National Lotteryfunded sports capital expenditure.

This is not a criticism of political decision makers as individuals. It is an acceptance of the political maxim, stated by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, that when it comes to politics “every man be supposed to be a knave”.

Mr Hume might have overcooked the pudding suggesting that we consider every politician a knave. However, logical consistency suggests we treat Fine Gael politicians as morally equivalent to their Fianna Fail counterparts and legislate accordingly.

Given our recent trials, tribulations and tribunals, Irish citizens should need little convincing that it is at least a plausible starting point.

European policymakers have decided that politicians ( including ours) need to be constrained by rules that limit borrowing.

We should have similar rules limiting the amount of per capita National Lottery allocations of sports capital funding to any political constituency.

Writing on page 1 today, Kim Bielenberg examines the current round of sports grant allocations. It is not too much of an overstatement to suggest that Enda Kenny and Michael Ring looked after Mayo. We should not be surprised. Why should they be any different to their predecessors?

There is enough evidence to show that Jim Mcdaid, John O'donoghue, Charlie Mccreevy and Brian Cowen were well able to bring home the sports bacon.

Donegal topped the per person sports capital grants league when Jim Mcdaid was Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism. Kerry topped the same league when John O'donoghue became minister. Kildare was second while Mr Mccreevy was in Finance and then dropped into the relegation zone when he moved to Europe.

As finance minister, Brian Cowen increased the funding for sports capital grants. He topped up the money coming from the National Lottery. Coincidentally, Offaly moved up the per capita sports capital league. It seems he deemed sports capital funding a high priority.

Less than five years later, he was Taoiseach in a government that deemed sports capital grants surplus to requirements.

Past experience suggests that there is more than political geography to the allocations. It seems there is a political cycle to the allocations.

Prior to the 2002 and 2007 gen- eral elections the number of grant allocations was higher than in the previous couple of years. The announcement of the allocations was also brought forward to earlier in the calendar year – possibly to allow the electorate to appreciate the largesse.

Before considering any new set of rules we should consider the case for allowing things to continue as they are. Some will argue that “what goes around comes around”. They will argue that Mayo did poorly under previous sports grant allocations and that they are now getting what they deserve.

This line can also be used to explain why Donegal and Kildare are doing relatively poorly in recent allocations.

A related defence of the current system is that other constituencies benefit from having other ministers. These constituencies might benefit in terms of expenditure for a health minister, or an environment minister, and so on. What they lose on the sporting- swings they pick up on the other roundabouts.

There is one other explanation of the sports grant allocations that is worth considering.

There is some evidence to show that there are a greater number of applications from the constituency of the minister with responsibility for sport. This helps explain the greater allocation.

HOWEVER, it raises questions about the public perception of the allocation process. It’s as if the citizens of the country believe that they are more likely to get an allocation if the minister is from their constituency. Is this fair?

What options do we have? We could seek the appointment of an independent board that would oversee the allocations. Would such a board be truly independent? Who would appoint them? Would ministerial appointments be independent? Might it become another quango with jobs for the boys/ girls?

A better alternative is a cap on the constituency allocations. For example, we could say that in terms of per person funding no constituency should get more than 50pc above the national average.

It would then be possible to see breaches of the bright- line rule. We could further require that any breach be explained to the Comptroller & Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee.

Of course, no set of rules is likely to be without problems. A sports funding cap is no more a silver bullet than the salary cap on civil service pay. However, it is a relatively simple, transparent and immediate way of addressing the issue of political influence in sports capital funding.