Munster chief Fitzgerald aims to take 400 club players off dole every year

[Eamonnca1]

GAA propose €8m back to work scheme
Munster chief Fitzgerald aims to take 400 club players off dole every year

Thursday March 31 2011

Hard times demand brave decisions and, in the case of the GAA, that involves paying out €8m over the next five years to help club players who have fallen victim to the recession.

That's the view of Munster CEO Pat Fitzgerald, whose proposal to introduce a €1.6m-per-year support scheme for unemployed club players is one of the most far-reaching in GAA history.

It means, in effect, that the GAA would subsidise employers to the tune of €4,000 per person to hire an out-of-work club player for a year. It would be paid as part of the salary, providing a four-way gain for the player, the business, the GAA and the state.

The player would benefit from becoming re-employed; business would be boosted by having a salary subsidised by €333 per month, the GAA would retain players who might otherwise emigrate, while the state's social welfare bill would be reduced by over €3m per year.

"The GAA has always been more than a sporting organisation," said Fitzgerald. "We're deep-rooted in our communities and, at a time of crisis such as the country is going through at present, we need to figure out a way of helping people in a practical way. This scheme wouldn't solve all the ills of the country, but it would do an awful lot for the 400 unemployed players -- and their clubs -- who benefited."

Fitzgerald envisages that, from a business viewpoint, the scheme would be attractive to employers with a strong interest and/or involvement in the GAA.

"There are plenty of them out there and some may be in a position to hire a player if they got some financial help. If the €4,000 payment to an employer made the difference between taking on somebody or not, then it would be money well spent from the GAA's viewpoint," he said.

"It's heart-breaking for families and communities and devastating for clubs to see so many young people emigrating and I believe that we in the GAA have a duty to try something that will help the cause in whatever way we can. We can't stop the drain of talent through emigration, but if we were able to keep 400 club players at home each year, it would be something at least."

Fitzgerald doesn't anticipate any major administrative hitches as the qualifying rules would be tightly managed, while the scheme would be run by the provincial councils and, if required, Croke Park. Clubs would provide details of their unemployed players and only those currently on the dole would be eligible. County boards would identify businesses with a GAA leaning, after which the matching process would proceed as in any regular job application situation.

The €4,000 grant would be paid directly to the employer so that everything was above board on all fronts.

Fitzgerald believes that the €1.6m required to fund the scheme could be diverted from grants for facility development in clubs. He estimates that if even one quarter of that money was re-directed towards the job-support fund by the provincial councils it would come close to raising the €800,000 required. The rest would be paid from a similar Croke Park fund.

"What I'm proposing is that, after investing heavily in developing grounds and other facilities in clubs over several years, we invest in people at a time of great need," he said. "I'm not saying we should end all development, but we've got to scale it back to what's appropriate in these changed times."

proposal

Fitzgerald plans to put his proposal before fellow provincial CEOs Michael Delaney (Leinster), John Prenty (Connacht), Danny Murphy (Ulster), GAA director-general Paraic Duffy and the heads of the various Croke Park departments over the coming weeks. That group meet regularly to help streamline administration nationally.

Fitzgerald, a former Limerick county board chairman who took over as Munster CEO in 2008, believes that the devastating impact of emigration on the GAA won't be fully realised until some of the smaller clubs, especially in rural Ireland, are unable to field teams.

"We have to do something to keep as many of our players as possible at home," he said. "The GAA is a great organisation for contacts and networks and we should use it at a time like this. There are people who will say that playing games should be our only business, but there's more to it than that.

"We are a community-based organisation and, at a time like this, when the country is going through such hardship, we should harness everything we have in the GAA. As far as I'm concerned, that involves making a financial contribution if it helps create jobs for some of our unemployed club players."

Irish Independent

I have a number of problems with this.

• 
  Are these payments something that are going to go on in perpetuity? Surely the money is going to run out eventually and the lads won't be making enough to get by. This might only delay the inevitable.


• Is it really the GAA's job to subsidize make-work schemes like this?


• Is it a good idea to scale back on capital investment? Spending that money on grounds and facilities leaves something to show for it. Pouring it into peoples' pay packets does not.


• The GAA does not lose many people who emigrate. Most of them join GAA clubs wherever in the world they go. It pisses me off when people keep talking about the GAA as if it only exists in one country. It's not a national organisation. It's a global organisation. Whether someone's playing for a GAA club in Washington or Waterford he's still part of the GAA.

[seafoid]

I don't agree, Eamonn. I once met a Galway hurler, Billy Duffy, who emigrated in 1958.
He never went home. Galway lost a lot of those hurlers and they didn't win anything for a long time.
And even if he played in Ruislip for some London club the sport lost out.     

[seafoid]

Here is more on GAA unemployment

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2010/1217/1224285733700.html

GAELIC GAMES NEWS:  IN AN effort to address unemployment and emigration of young GAA members, the director general of the association Páraic Duffy met the Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó c*ív last Wednesday before endorsing the "Tús" (meaning "Start") initiative. The FAI and other sporting associations were also present.

As many as 200 GAA members currently unemployed will receive an additional €20 on their weekly social welfare payment of €188 by working as coaches in their local community for 19½ hours a week.
Up to 5,000 people in total are expected to take part in the scheme. As a result, they will be taken off the live register.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sport/2011/0401/1224293539945.html


The most pressing challenge facing the players' bodies at present, however, is not emigration but the related issue of employment.
The effectiveness of initiatives introduced by the GPA career service coach Mairéad Griffin has seen a drop in unemployment of GPA members from 15 to 12 per cent recently but Potts is aware this figure is liable to fluctuate and will certainly spike when graduates come out of third level education in the coming months. The figure is in line with the current national unemployment figure of 14.7 percent or 442,000.
"In a recent two-month period the work of Mairéad Griffin and others on the ground has seen 100 inter-county players moving off the live register and into gainful employment," Potts continued. "But we know it is an ongoing issue. There are roughly 250 players currently out of work."
Employment in sales is a viable alternative for inter-county players who have developed a profile through their sporting exploits only to be made redundant by the decrease in construction work around the country which also reduced the demand for tradesmen. "For those without skills it is about getting them back into education, so as to up-skill them for future opportunities."