Dublin have hit jackpot with capital sitting pretty at top of the charts for GAA grants

Seán McGoldrick reports, P14-15

DUBLIN has struck the financial jackpot in the last decade, securing a record pay-out of €20,241,973 from the GAA. An analysis of payments made to counties by the Association since 2011 reveal Dublin received 9.24pc of the total pot of €219,007,318. Winners of a record eight All-Ireland titles between 2011 and 2020, they also top the financial charts for this period.

Furthermore, they came top of the pile in three of the seven payment categories which make up the total fund.

Cork takes second place thanks primarily to a €7,616,668 grant for the redevelopment of Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Cork secured pay-outs totalling €14,662,407, but this figure does not paint the full picture. In his report to the 2020 GAA Congress, director general Tom Ryan revealed Croke Park are owed €10m arising from the stadium project.

Predictably, the bigger and more successful counties feature prominently, with Kerry (€8,376,058), Tipperary (€8,197,701) and Galway (€7,913,133) making the top five.

The GAA’s commitment to its overseas units, which include clubs in Europe, the Middle East, the Far

East, Australia, New Zealand and the United States is reflected in the fact that the overseas sector secured €7,711,333 in funding between 2011 and 2020.

Fermanagh is bottom of the table in terms of funding for the 32 counties with just a 1.76pc share of the total pot. Only London, New York, Warwickshire and Lancashire received less.

But several high-profile counties lag behind the top recipients as well. Wexford (2.43pc), Meath (2.26pc), Down (4.54pc), Cavan (2.05pc), and Armagh (1.98pc) languish in the bottom third of the money table.

Debate

While most of the debate over Croke Park funding is focused on the share-out of the coaching and games development budget, there are six other categories through which direct financial payments are funnelled from Croke Park to individual counties.

The funding provided to the five provincial councils, four in Ireland and Great Britain, is not included in the tables.

The seven headings under which payments are made are: rent; basic distribution; competition distribution; team and player expenses; games development; operating grants and capital grants.

Ground rental payments are made to county boards who host intercounty games based on a per cent of the gate receipts. Tipperary tops this list, receiving €587,185 thanks primarily to the number of high-profile matches played in Thurles’ Semple Stadium. Dublin received €231,165 under this heading.

Since 2014, the GAA has equalised the annual payments to counties under basic distribution at €175,000 each. This grant, which is earmarked to assist counties with their annual operational costs, is funded by national sponsorship deals as well as TV rights payments. Due to the fall in the GAA commercial revenue last year because of Covid-19, the figure paid to each county was reduced to €130,000.

Counties are also entitled to an annual operating grant to support their full-time administrator/operations manager. It averages €30,000 for each county.

All counties receive a share of the gates from their league matches after match-day costs and a distribution to a centralised pool is deducted. The monies in the pool at the end of the competition is divided out between the lower-tier league counties to bring them up to a minimum figure.

Counties do not receive any direct share of gate receipts from championship games which go to provincial and Central Council.

The bigger counties with larger home gates as well as counties who consistently advance to the knockout stages of the leagues fare best.

Dublin’s footballers won five league titles in the last decade (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018) and were beaten finalists in 2011 and 2017, and just for good measure their hurlers won the league in 2011.

So, it’s no surprise that Dublin tops this list with a total pay-out since 2011 of €1,801,021 which represents 7.93pc of the total pot of €22.7m. In second place is Tipperary (€1,225,452), with Galway (€1,180,946), Kerry (€1,105,507) and Kilkenny (€1,098,831) filling the other top five spots.

The lower end of the table is dominated by a combination of the perennial strugglers and counties with smaller populations. Between them the bottom eight counties – excluding Warwickshire and Lancashire – only received 13.4pc of the total figure.

Dublin also tops the match expenses payments chart which will surprise many observers. In the last 10 years they received €2,387,094 in team and player expenses, ahead of Kerry (€2,370,320), Galway (€2,293,311) and Mayo (€2,118,527).

According to the GAA’s finance director Ger Mulryan, items covered under team and player expenses include player miles, nutrition costs and grants to assist with matchday costs. The figures also include expenses and grants for club teams who participate in the All-Ireland phase of the club championships.

Under deals negotiated by the Gaelic Players Association, the inter-county players’ mileage rate increased from 38 cent in 2003 to a high of 65 cent per mile for the first 100 miles travelled and 62.5 cent thereafter in 2016. It was reduced to a flat rate of 50 cent per mile last year due to the pandemic.

There is an additional overnight, per capita expense paid if a county must travel more than 110km to a game.

Given that Dublin played only

seven championship matches outside Croke Park since 2011, it is slightly odd that their expenses were higher than Kerry and Mayo, both of which are situated on the western seaboard and have been consistently involved in high-profile league and championship matches in Croke Park.

The GAA make an annual contribution to the All-Ireland winners’ holiday fund – the figure is believed to be in the region of €80,000.

In the period covered by the accounts, Dublin would have received eight separate payments as All-Ireland winners – only Kilkenny hurlers with four Liam MacCarthy wins (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015) have a comparable success rate at the highest level. This is one explanation for the largesse of the Dublin figure.

Apart from the top five already listed, the other counties who grossed more than one million euro under this heading were Tipperary, Cork and Donegal. But the chasm between the top performing counties and those who struggle to make an impact in the All-Ireland series is illustrated in Table C.

Between them, Wicklow, Louth, Longford, Offaly, and Carlow secured 5.8pc of the total fund which is less than the individual share of any of the top five.

But it is the much debated and vexed question of the share-out of GAA’s coaching and games development budget will again catch the eye in Table D.

Since 2011, Dublin has secured 26pc of the total grant paid to the 37 units listed – 32 counties as well as overseas units, London, New York, Lancashire and Warwickshire.

Dublin received €13,538,750 from the fund – which amounts to 66.88pc of their total grant aid from the GAA in the last decade.

It is more than three times bigger than the overseas units, which is second on the list, while the figure is six times greater than the next biggest county, Cork, who received €2,266,937.

Surprisingly, three of the most successful counties Kilkenny (€861,382), Donegal (€831,914), and Mayo (€803,666) are in the lower end of the table. Outside the four overseas ‘counties’ listed, the bottom four – Fermanagh, Tyrone, Down, and Armagh – are all from Ulster.

Gulf

The gulf has narrowed slightly in the last decade.

The funding was front-loaded for Dublin between 2007 and 2011 when they received €6,467,283 which represented 59.1pc of the total budget paid to individual counties in that period.

Last year all coaching funding was slashed due to the financial meltdown caused by Covid-19.

Dublin received €745,695 which equates to 19.1pc of the total pay-out to counties and provinces – including Britain – and all overseas units.

All but €145,695 of the Dublin grant came from a ring-fenced funding provision set up when Bertie Ahern was Taoiseach which was designed to fund the then embryonic Dublin GAA coaching project.

In 2020 the GAA received €663,000 via the Sports Council from the so-called ‘Bertie Fund’. However, in January 2017, former GAA director general Páraic Duffy told the Oireachtas joint committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport that this grant was no longer ring-fenced for Dublin.

“It is a matter for us to decide how it is used,” he said adding that a considerable amount was still being allocated to Dublin.

It is virtually impossible to measure the precise impact the gulf in funding has on counties. However, when counties received their last full allocation in 2019 it was worth €652.82 to each individual youth team in Dublin compared to €143.49 for youth teams in Cork.

Unquestionably, Dublin’s coaching programme benefits from a disproportionate share of the national pot. However, it is worth noting that Dublin received a paltry €107,438 from the GAA’s capital budget over the last decade compared to Cork’s €7.6m.

This may change during the next decade as the Dublin GAA board embark on plans to re-develop the Spawell site in Templeogue and the former Hollystown Golf club which they purchased in the last four years.

But in the short-term all counties can anticipate funding from Croke Park to be curtailed as the pandemic continues to impact on GAA finances.