Without these people,65 sport wouldn’t happen
‘I WAS POSITIVELY AFFECTED BY VOLUNTEERS ALL MY LIFE’
‘THEY ARE THE HEARTBEAT OF EVERY COMMUNITY IN IRELAND’
‘PEOPLE think, “What can I do?” But everyone can do something,’ says Mary Dunne with a smile. She speaks at an occasion honouring those who, like her, believe in getting things done.
Mary Dunne was the winner of the outstanding contribution award at the Volunteers in Sport celebration this week, a marvellous initiative revived after a five-year lull, by the Federation of Irish Sport for 2019.
It was day of wicked cold around Farmleigh House in the Phoenix Park last Tuesday.
The trees were having the last of their leaves blown away by a biting wind, and the sky was assuming the mottled grey shade that it will struggle to wash out before St Patrick’s Day.
Inside the exquisite surrounds of Farmleigh, though, the old house glowed with plain happiness.
Volunteers in sport are rather like good health: understood to be vital but mostly taken for granted.
Every medal-winning story, every new account of All-Ireland glory or budding soccer stardom, features the volunteer. They are the irreducible core of the sporting fairytale, the diligent organiser or coach or administrator who devotes a large part of their lives to a passion that makes the lives of others better.
Mary Dunne became involved with the Ballina Dolphins Swimming Club when her children started swimming.
And it was as uncomplicated as that, as it usually is. From there, she volunteered regionally and then nationally.
As she spoke in Farmleigh, she mentioned that before returning to Mayo that evening, she had to collect equipment for the Connacht short-course championship, held in Castlebar over this weekend.
‘But it’s not just me giving up my time,’ she stresses.
‘There are so many that give up their time, and without them we would have no sport.
‘We can have the politicians, we can have the governing bodies, but without the clubs and the volunteers? The club is where the football player will start.
‘My daughter started in a little club swimming six hours a week, and she represented Ireland. She had to start somewhere.
‘She had to have somebody in there coaching her, going with her to a gala, the whole cycle.’
Volunteers from each of the 32 counties of Ireland were presented with awards at the event – and the form the award took was a thoughtful one.
Each was given a gold medal, explains Mary O’Connor, the CEO of the Federation of Irish Sport.
We were talking among ourselves in the office about this and I said,
“These volunteers never win a medal”. ‘They are involved in sports where teams and athletes win medals, and so we wanted to give them that, too.
‘What they do for their sports and enriching lives, we wanted to recognise that.
‘We also did a survival pack for them, a little bag that contained a stick of gum, indicating they should always stick with it; a cotton ball to soften the falls, and a puzzle piece to show them that they are such an important part of their community.
‘This was about them and nobody else.’
It is a function of the status of the GAA on this island that the word volunteer in sporting conversation is usually used about players, coaches, mentors and administrators in hurling and football.
But there isn’t a sport that could survive without them.
The fact is most of them go about their passion unacknowledged by the wider world.
Just before October’s Budget, the Federation released a study which
examined the value of sport to the Irish economy.
As part of the study, conducted by Investec, an estimation of the value of volunteering was made. Sport Ireland say that there are 450,000 volunteers in Irish sport.
Using that figure, and an average weekly investment in time of three and a half hours per volunteer, the average industrial wage was applied to come up with a figure of €1.1billion.
‘We need our policy makers to understand that these volunteers are the heartbeat of every community they are in,’ says Mary O’Connor.
‘When they volunteer, they stimulate local economies, too.
‘They ensure our sport happens, so supporters come and spend money.’
The resumption of the volunteer awards scheme after it lapsed fulfilled one of the aims of O’Connor on assuming the position of chief executive with the Federation.
‘I was personally positively affected by volunteers all my life,’ she says. O’Connor enjoyed a highly distinguished football and camogie career with Cork, that brought 12 senior All-Ireland medals between the two codes.
‘We revived the awards because we always say sport matters. These are the people that make sport happen.
‘If we didn’t have the volunteers, then we couldn’t make sport happen across the island of Ireland.
‘They might be recognised within
their sports, but we wanted to give them a national platform.’
Modern life, with its complications, its incessant beat, with the difficulties of disengaging from work in a world of ceaseless communications, is often depicted as the enemy of volunteering.
Time is scarce, demands pile up like snow drifts.
Mary Dunne recognises the difficulties this creates for volunteering.
‘The lifestyle we have at the moment – and my children now are in their 20s, but I see it with younger children – everything is structured, even the children’s play.
‘It’s harder to get volunteers because parents are so busy with structured lives. Everything is prescribed.
‘We are very lucky in our club at the moment, because we have younger people (involved) and we keep trying to get younger and younger people involved.
‘We say, “Look, these are your kids”. “Ah no, sure you’re fine, you’re able to do that”. “No, no, we’ll show you how to do it”.
‘It’s about not being afraid,’ she says.
She laughs when asked to try and quantify her investment in Dolphins Swimming Club, or the wider swimming community through Connacht and the rest of Ireland.
This weekend, trips back and forth from her home in Ballina to Castlebar broke up long days helping organise the event being held in the town.
Long drives to Dublin are a regular feature, too.
She understands that there is nothing exceptional about her investment in a club and a sport she loves.
It is the mark of the volunteer all over Ireland.
‘It’s great to be recognised,’ she says, and that was the value of the awards ceremony this week.
Fame is not the lure for the volunteer, but in going to the trouble of acknowledging the importance of the volunteer, the Federation of Irish Sport did a service to the hundreds of thousands that make sport possible.
‘I had to ring all the winners and tell them they had won in advance,’ explains Mary O’Connor.
‘I rang Seamus Spaight, the Clare winner, from Meelick GAA. When he answered the phone, he said, “Sorry there for a minute”, and he explained that he was out cutting the pitch at the time.
‘I’m the daughter of a volunteer who volunteered for the GAA, the ICA, the community council, and I can only admire these people.’