Sports Funding in NI

[delgany]

Entirely agree.

I've already heard stories of clubs planning to use the funds to upgrade facilities etc

I guess ethically there's the question but the system was there to be applied for.

My genuine fear is clubs do use the funds for those purposes & the audit process review deems them to be outside the scope & money is sought to be clawed back.

Media et al will get their teeth into this and plenty will come to light I'm sure.

A sorry mess across all sport.

Cycling Ireland have been called out already

[FermGael]

Is it evident that the GAA clubs with the biggest grants recieved have undertaken major capital investments in past three years?
If they have been fundraising for a community hub and raised for example, £100k in 2019 - 2020, it seems like they have been able to claim for this - income loss. It looks like these capital costs have been overlooked as has one off fundraising opportunities, as opposed to running costs only for grants

And again clubs have to be very very careful here. I assume these grants will be audited.  Most clubs now have some sort of Cairde Scheme set up for fundraising. What if the Cairde account , which won't be an official club account , say has £100000 on it and the official club account has a deficit say of £100000.   
Could get messy very quickly.

[Silver hill]

Is it evident that the GAA clubs with the biggest grants recieved have undertaken major capital investments in past three years?
If they have been fundraising for a community hub and raised for example, £100k in 2019 - 2020, it seems like they have been able to claim for this - income loss. It looks like these capital costs have been overlooked as has one off fundraising opportunities, as opposed to running costs only for grants

And again clubs have to be very very careful here. I assume these grants will be audited.  Most clubs now have some sort of Cairde Scheme set up for fundraising. What if the Cairde account , which won't be an official club account , say has £100000 on it and the official club account has a deficit say of £100000.   
Could get messy very quickly.

Majority of clubs will have a separate set of officials for their Cairde fundraising for that very reason.
Would be that way as well to fully benefit from Gift Aid. This particular grant was for sporting bodies only. The audited accounts provided to show the downturn in the P&l would only be assessed on the clubs working accounts, cairde would have been separate. Income in a lot of clubs would not have been down significantly due to covid. Membership, lotto, on line bingo, turbine income would all have continued whilst costs for management expenses etc would have significantly reduced

[Rossfan]

https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2021-06-22/covid-hardship-scheme-for-sporting-organisations-criticised-by-auditor-general