Finance chief warns GAA resources not endless

THE GAA’S Director of Finance has warned that the association’s resources are not infinite when it comes to dealing with financial problems at club and county level.

Tom Ryan said yesterday: “There’s a perception that this big entity called Croke Park will come in and solve problems for clubs and counties. The reality is that our resources aren’t endless.

“We go through an exhaustive budgeting process and at the end of the year we have more or less nothing left.

“We plan for that at the start of the year, so if something unforeseen arises with a club or county during the year it can be difficult to find the resources to alleviate those problems – unless they’re flagged early and there’s a warning about them.

“We know we have a responsibility and we would never walk away from a problem,” added Ryan.

“But the extent and speed of our response is governed by our resources. People look at the amount of money that comes in – the number of times Croke Park is filled and so on – but we’re not sitting on a big pile of money.

“Every euro is earmarked for something and as our circumstances change we need to be more precise than ever with allocating that money.”

Ryan pointed to the downturn in the property market as causing problems for certain GAA clubs.

“Some of the clubs that have been in trouble tend to have been involved in property transactions, situations which arose out of a genuine wish to advance their clubs.

“I wouldn’t blame the clubs for that. Some of the plans might have been over-elaborate, and we would have advised them on that as the need arose, but it’s more a case of clubs being the victims of circumstances, and you do your best to work with those people to come up with a solution.”

Regarding county boards encountering financial difficulties, Ryan said that Croke Park’s involvement in each county’s budgeting process helped to flag problems early.

“We’re working with county boards all the time, and they’d all submit their budgets at the start of the year.

“We’d meet with the treasurers of the county boards at various times to track their progress on those.

“So you’d hope it wouldn’t be an emergency situation cropping up – at that stage, if you only hear about it when there’s trouble, it may be too late. The challenge for us is to monitor things as they go rather than letting them get out of control. It’s a matter of managing costs, because in general terms we’re doing okay with the main business of running matches and games. It’s not spectacular and you can’t be complacent, but we’re holding up all right.

“Where we’re suffering is in the non-core elements of our business – the commercial stuff, ancillary revenues from sponsorship and so on. And it’s the same for counties. It’s getting hard to attract county sponsors, and to hold onto them.”

Ryan pointed out that teams costs money, and the recession is making it harder for even successful counties to generate funds.

“If you’re running a team it’s going to cost money, but often it’s not the training trip abroad so much as the underlying patterns. Things like the number of training sessions or the length of time a county is involved in the season – and no county knows how long it’ll be involved, obviously.

“What tends to be a problem is spending commensurate with a level of ambition that can’t be achieved.

” A county may have a good year and then the following season it’ll increase the numbers on the backroom team and so on, anticipating a level of success that they don’t achieve. But they’re still stuck with the people they took on.

“A lot of these things are driven by non-financial motives. People don’t look at the costs until after the fact, and though that’s beginning to change now, you’d always be conscious that the GAA isn’t in business to make a profit.

“But while people need to be conscious of the financial implications, a county secretary will never say – and should never say – that a team can’t train because there’s no money. Otherwise the tail is wagging the dog.

“Counties may do well, for instance, with corporate fundraising if they’re in the run-up to an All-Ireland final, or afterwards, but even that isn’t guaranteed in this financial climate. Counties need to be conscious of that.”

Ryan accepted that rank and file GAA members often wonder where the money generated on big match days in Croke Park goes, adding that clubs should still retain ambition for the future.

“It can be our fault, not explaining where the money generated on summer Sundays is spent. But if you think about the sheer number of clubs, then if we divided our resources evenly among over 2,000 clubs it wouldn’t amount to much.

“I wouldn’t like to see clubs lose their ambition either. And given the year that’s in it, the 125th anniversary, we should remember there have been hard times before and it would be a mistake to withdraw into our shell out of sheer economic fear.”