Minister’s tweet on Wesley pitch revealed fatal flaw with sports grants

THE tweet last week by Minister for Transport, Shane Ross TD about the Sports Capital Grant for Wesley College really brought into focus the need to revise the system and remove all political influence from the process.

The Minister has insisted that he did not interfere in the process of a private school in his constituency receiving a €150,000 sports grant after the denial of the original application had overturned following appeal.

Ross stated, ‘I never made a representation to any official’ and that the application by Wesley College was scored by department officials and that he signed off on the decision without observations or comment.

He added that the application was initially refused and that he had also signed off on that. However, the school later appealed and was awarded the grant.

He acknowledged that the tweet was an error of judgement and certainly as someone who has made a career of condemning stroke politics and cronyism he would have to admit that the optics didn’t look good and ordering a review into the process indicates a level of acceptance that there is something in the current system that merits a review.

Wesley College was not the only ap- plication to be successfully appealed and amongst the decisions which were reversed was a number of golf, tennis and yacht clubs, in addition to GAA, soccer and rugby clubs.

However it was the Wesley College decision, the Minister’s tweet and the already extensive facilities at the fee paying school which brought the matter to national attention.

We really need a more transparent system for the allocation of sports capital grants, as the level of funding allocated to Kerry and Donegal during the tenure of former TDs John O’Donoghue and Jim McDaid respectively and then Mayo during Minister Michael Ring’s time in the Department suggests that that there is advantage in having a Minister in the Department.

That is not fair, for there is only one Minister in the Department at any time and the majority of constituencies will never be in a position to have one of their TDs in the Department.

Yet surely, each and every county and constituency has sports clubs deserving and in need of the sports capital project funding.

The Sports Capital Grants are announced in November and last year Louth received €1.6million in grants for 42 different clubs, with Sean O’Mahonys GFC getting the largest grant of €150,000 down to €1,400 awarded to Drogheda Water Polo Club.

Not every application made by Louth clubs in 2017 was successful in securing grant funding, as 53 sports clubs or organisations made applications but only 42 were successful in gaining funding.

For of those who missed out in November 2017 were successful in previous years or may well be successful in 2019 or 2020 but that’s not the point.

The system should be transparent, however difficult that may be, given the finite resources and a scheme which is typically over-subscribed. All decisions will always be somewhat subjective and clubs may well feel hard done by when they fail in their application but all sports clubs and organisations should have total faith and trust in the allocations in so far as possible and last week’s tweet by Minister Ross puts an element of doubt into how the process works.

That’s not proper and hopefully the review announced by the Minister will devise a way to remove any allegation of political interference in the process.

Fair play in sport is an ideal we try to teach children when they start to play sport. Maybe we should ensure fair play