National Forum

Illegal payments to managers.

(Oldest Posts First)

I have been very critical of Padraic Duffy in the past but I take my hat off to him & acknowledge his bravery in coming forward with his comments on illegal payments to managers. His language is hard hitting & forthright & spot on. I have witnessed this first hand & watched as it destroyed clubs. Many excellent Gaa people have walked away over this issue. You cannot have an ethos of everyone volunteering in a club & fundraising & one guy coming in & taking a large sum of money out of the club, it destroys the fabric of the whole ethos. Mercenaries coming in for one or two years picking up sums from €5K to €20K on average & putting clubs under massive financial pressure often impacting spending on underage structures. These guys usually fail & move on to the next club. Many clubs are paying managers & hiding the fact from members as well which apart from the deceit & dishonesty is fraudulent as well. It is happening at Inter County level as well. There is one answer to this & that is to bring in revenue to investigate this as it is all undeclared income. Some guys are at this for a decade or more making huge sums of money. I recently watched a training session of a club who have a paid manager, the guy has a very well paid job with company car. The team he was coaching had two lads who are unemployed, the irony of two lads with nothing been coached by a guy with a great job who is then getting a large sum of money to coach them seemed to be lost on everyone in that club. The omertà of silence is like the mafia & the ostracising of anyone with the guts to bring it up is a regular occurrence, we have all seen it in this country what effect the omertà of silence had when it came to the abuse cases in other Irish institutions. This is wrong & destroying the Association. Revenue should come in as there is a massive haul to be made on non disclosure of income & clubs who are in receipt of public funding & grants should be also fined & have any access to funding prevented. It could cause grave problems for the Association & Govt if it were published or a whistleblower comes forward telling how some clubs having got large sums of public funding are illegally paying managers & not declaring it & in some cases having used some of the public monies drawn down to pay this. There is a mass of information out there if it continues to be swept under the carpet it's only a matter of time before some good journalist exposes it. Well done Padraic Duffy for tackling the elephant in the room, your stock has risen immeasurably.

moc.dna (Galway) - Posts: 1212 - 13/05/2017 11:39:06    1986397

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there is NO WAY payments to managers will EVER stop regardless of what the 'top brass' in Croke try to do to stop it.

THEMOLE2 (Down) - Posts: 1615 - 13/05/2017 12:37:38    1986404

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Replying To moc.dna:  "I have been very critical of Padraic Duffy in the past but I take my hat off to him & acknowledge his bravery in coming forward with his comments on illegal payments to managers. His language is hard hitting & forthright & spot on. I have witnessed this first hand & watched as it destroyed clubs. Many excellent Gaa people have walked away over this issue. You cannot have an ethos of everyone volunteering in a club & fundraising & one guy coming in & taking a large sum of money out of the club, it destroys the fabric of the whole ethos. Mercenaries coming in for one or two years picking up sums from €5K to €20K on average & putting clubs under massive financial pressure often impacting spending on underage structures. These guys usually fail & move on to the next club. Many clubs are paying managers & hiding the fact from members as well which apart from the deceit & dishonesty is fraudulent as well. It is happening at Inter County level as well. There is one answer to this & that is to bring in revenue to investigate this as it is all undeclared income. Some guys are at this for a decade or more making huge sums of money. I recently watched a training session of a club who have a paid manager, the guy has a very well paid job with company car. The team he was coaching had two lads who are unemployed, the irony of two lads with nothing been coached by a guy with a great job who is then getting a large sum of money to coach them seemed to be lost on everyone in that club. The omertà of silence is like the mafia & the ostracising of anyone with the guts to bring it up is a regular occurrence, we have all seen it in this country what effect the omertà of silence had when it came to the abuse cases in other Irish institutions. This is wrong & destroying the Association. Revenue should come in as there is a massive haul to be made on non disclosure of income & clubs who are in receipt of public funding & grants should be also fined & have any access to funding prevented. It could cause grave problems for the Association & Govt if it were published or a whistleblower comes forward telling how some clubs having got large sums of public funding are illegally paying managers & not declaring it & in some cases having used some of the public monies drawn down to pay this. There is a mass of information out there if it continues to be swept under the carpet it's only a matter of time before some good journalist exposes it. Well done Padraic Duffy for tackling the elephant in the room, your stock has risen immeasurably."
Moc
I tried to bring this topic up my self a few months back but the admin wouldn't publish my post for some reason, so I'm delighted to see you get a chance to bring it up for debate.

I'm not totally against payment of coaches within reason, once it's done in a fair and clear manner.

Some of the money paid out by the big clubs is ridiculous though.

Also people running the clubs should be looked into in the interest of fairness and if so I'd say there would be a lot of guys sweating if the revenue got involved.

KingdomBoy1 (Kerry) - Posts: 14092 - 13/05/2017 13:01:36    1986410

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Ive no problem with managers being paid, id also like to see the players being paid too, just my opinion, i know loads with disagree with me

TrevorPhillips (Cork) - Posts: 28 - 13/05/2017 14:07:50    1986427

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Great post, MOC.D.N.A! I see clubs in my area having to engage in massive fundraising initiatives just to pay an outside manager anything between 80 and 120 euro a session. Very often these mercenaries are actually quite poor coaches but have somehow build up a reputation for themselves "on the circuit". Imagine if these clubs diverted some of this cash to implement proper underage and school coaching in their area? Surely a more sustainable use of their resources??

football first (None) - Posts: 1259 - 13/05/2017 15:18:56    1986439

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Well what do you think is the solution? Managers and players to put in years of sacrifices, sacrifices that force them to miss time with their family, miss time that they could spend socialising and 'having a life' as many describe it, miss time travelling abroad and seeing the world, miss time earning job promotions etc, why? Because for the love of the club. I'm sorry but in this day and age that's not a valid excuse. The level of commitment that even top club teams are putting in is frightening, let's not even mention the county sides. Some sort of financial benefit is the minimum that players and managers should be receiving. Thanks

PoppinPoints (Meath) - Posts: 225 - 13/05/2017 16:44:20    1986451

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"The omertà of silence is like the mafia & the ostracising of anyone with the guts to bring it up is a regular occurrence" - but it only requires the silence of a very few especially the club treasurer and the executive. GAA clubs have a special revenue charity/not-for-profit status they are not allowed make a profit they are required to spend that profit - on the club. But under "coaching development" that can encompass any and everything.
To get an understanding of the problem of payments to people by a not-for-profit organisation just read this:
http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/columnists/paddy-heaney/clubs-must-realise-that-gaa-is-not-a-charity-360733.html

But if anyone knows anything there is one way to stop, revenue are very proactive in pursuing this matter. It is a rat-race at both club and inter-county level and it is not sustainable.

arock (Dublin) - Posts: 4896 - 13/05/2017 17:12:33    1986454

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Replying To football first:  "Great post, MOC.D.N.A! I see clubs in my area having to engage in massive fundraising initiatives just to pay an outside manager anything between 80 and 120 euro a session. Very often these mercenaries are actually quite poor coaches but have somehow build up a reputation for themselves "on the circuit". Imagine if these clubs diverted some of this cash to implement proper underage and school coaching in their area? Surely a more sustainable use of their resources??"
Yes I agree with you. Anyone who has done fundraisers realises the amount of work that goes in to raising a clear sum like €10,000. Imagine if someone came to the juvenile section of a club with a cheque for €10,000 to help, people would be overjoyed. So imagine that sum going out to one individual who leaves after one year, his only legacy left is a €10,000 hole in the clubs account.

moc.dna (Galway) - Posts: 1212 - 13/05/2017 17:50:38    1986461

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Replying To KingdomBoy1:  "Moc
I tried to bring this topic up my self a few months back but the admin wouldn't publish my post for some reason, so I'm delighted to see you get a chance to bring it up for debate.

I'm not totally against payment of coaches within reason, once it's done in a fair and clear manner.

Some of the money paid out by the big clubs is ridiculous though.

Also people running the clubs should be looked into in the interest of fairness and if so I'd say there would be a lot of guys sweating if the revenue got involved."
I take your point on managers being paid but in a transparent manner, unfortunately it's far from that & in many cases it's hidden even from members which is very serious.

moc.dna (Galway) - Posts: 1212 - 13/05/2017 17:53:54    1986462

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Replying To arock:  ""The omertà of silence is like the mafia & the ostracising of anyone with the guts to bring it up is a regular occurrence" - but it only requires the silence of a very few especially the club treasurer and the executive. GAA clubs have a special revenue charity/not-for-profit status they are not allowed make a profit they are required to spend that profit - on the club. But under "coaching development" that can encompass any and everything.
To get an understanding of the problem of payments to people by a not-for-profit organisation just read this:
http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/columnists/paddy-heaney/clubs-must-realise-that-gaa-is-not-a-charity-360733.html

But if anyone knows anything there is one way to stop, revenue are very proactive in pursuing this matter. It is a rat-race at both club and inter-county level and it is not sustainable."
Great article that has a lot of what is going on & needs to be debated, thanks for posting that up.

moc.dna (Galway) - Posts: 1212 - 13/05/2017 18:00:34    1986463

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