By Sean O'Connor

Over the years this blog has looked at funding received by Irish sports clubs distributed by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport or its various different name groupings throughout the years. Various different pieces have examined different areas (here , here, here). Moreover, beyond this blog and within the academic literature Irish sports capital grant allocations have been focused on extensively. A common finding which tends to emerge amongst various studies is that those who control the purse strings tend to award their locality disproportionately. In essence the presence of pork barrel politics.

However, during my time reading various pieces on this topic I’ve never seen this data presented under the guise of the GINI coefficient. Developed by the Italian statistician and sociologist Corrando Gini, the Gini coefficient examines the measures of inequality amongst values of a frequency distribution. Most commonly what the measure is utilised for is the examination of income or wealth inequality. Its value can range from 0 to 1, where 1 would indicate that one person in the population controls all the income. Conversely a value of 0 would imply perfect equality, where the entire population has an equal spread of wealth or income. For example, according to the OECD Ireland’s GINI coefficient score in 2014 was 0.30 whereas in the United States for the same period it was 0.39. Therefore income was more unevenly distributed in the United States than Ireland.  

This piece will look at inequality in the distribution of Ireland’s sports capital grants over the period 2002-2015. To begin, Table 1 presents the GINI coefficients for the entire country over the different years.

For the earliest period where information was available the GINI coefficient stood at 0.56, with the distribution of grants becoming more equal throughout the years. This trend stopped in 2008 with a large spike in the score to 0.62. However, with the reintroduce of the sports capital grant process in 2012 we see a continued decrease year on year, where in 2015 it stood at 0.51. If we where to compare this to a countries income inequality, this value would rank alongside the likes of Brazil or Honduras in terms of unequal distribution. Similar to differences in years there may also be differences amongst counties and within counties during different periods. Therefore, Table 2 extends the analysis to calculate county and year specific GINI coefficients.

Initially, if we take an average of each GINI score over the entire period, Dublin, Cork and Limerick ranked first, second and third in terms of within county grant inequality over the period. Amongst these three counties, Limerick in 2008 recorded the highest GINI score with 0.76. In fact, Limerick had the most unequal distribution of grants in a number of years, 2003, 2007 and 2008. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Cavan over the entire period had the most even distribution of capital grants 0.34. Over the entire period and amongst all counties, Monaghan recorded the most equal distribution of grants in 2003 with a GINI score of 0.16.

Finally, what is interesting to look at is the ranking of GINI scores of the counties where the Minister of Sport was based. As was noted in the beginning from previous analysis, these counties tend to perform particularly well, relative to others. However, how do they rank in terms of the distribution of grants? Table 3 plots the ranks.

​What is interesting when examining the ordinal rankings of the data is it appears that the distribution of grants within a county become more equal towards the end of a Minister’s reign. Take for instance in both Kerry and Mayo, where in 2004 and 2005 Kerry ranked fourth and seventh in terms of within county grant inequality. However, for Minister O’Donoghue’s final announcement of grants the spread became much more equal within Kerry. A similar trend seemed to appear in Mayo, however, it is difficult to infer any conclusion from a descriptive examination of the data and a more empirical study would be necessary.
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A follow up piece to this blog will examine the distribution of grants amongst different types of sports over the same period.

By Sean O'Connor - Sean is a research assistance in the Department of Economics at University College Cork

Over the years the distribution of sports capital expenditure has been keenly monitored and commented on, with many entries on this site discussing the topic. (here, here and here). In 2014, former Minister of State for Sport and Tourism, Michael Ring noted the initial and final criteria which applicants were judged on, when applying for a grant.

Initial criteria
Likelihood of increasing participation/improving performance.
Sharing of facilities.
Level of socio-economic disadvantage.
Technical Merits of project.
Level of own funding available.
Sports Capital Programme Funding received in the past.

Final criteria
Ensuring geographic spread within county
Urban/Rural spread of projects
Spread of projects among different sports

This entry examines one of the final criteria noted by the Minister, the spread of funding amongst different sports. The table below provides a breakdown of funding by sport on a county basis over the period 2002-2014.

As can be seen from Table 1 two sports tend to dominate the allocation of grants, throughout the period, these being Gaelic Games and Multisport. Multisport can be a catch all term which can include, a joint initiative by two clubs, of different sporting codes, the building of a community hall or a grant awarded to a town council. Out of the 26 counties which the SCP covers, Multisport received the greatest share over the period in just four. These were Dublin, Sligo, Tipperary and Waterford. Gaelic Games dominates the share of within county grants, with 20 out of 26 regions seeing it as their largest funded sport.

Outside the two mentioned categories, only Rugby ranked as the largest funded sport in Limerick. However, much of this was for the redevelopment of Thomand Park. For instance 14 of 26 regions have Multisport as their second most funded activity. Gaelic Games and Soccer account for 4 and 8 respectively. For the entire period in question, on average the top two funded sports received 69% of total funding, with many counties seeing greater skews than others. In areas such as Cavan, Leitrim, Monaghan funding for the top two categories account for nearly 80% or greater, with the figure being highest in Leitrim with circa 82% of total funding designated to either Multisport or Gaelic Games. Cork and Dublin, regions which house the two largest urban areas also had the lowest shares of funding designated to their top two categories. This is interesting in the sense that these larger, more urban populations might see more diverse kinds of sport, rather than small rural populations. It should be noted even though Multisport ranks highly in regards to share of funding in both periods, these grants can also benefit further those who play Gaelic Games, as well as Soccer. For instance in 2012 under Fingal County Council, O’Dwyers GAA club and Balbriggan F.C received €120,000 for the construction of an all-weather facility.

Although, the Minister earmarked a spread of funding across different sports, analysing the breakdown of grants at a county level, it appears, both Gaelic Games and Soccer dominate the share of funding. Of course one of the initial criteria which applicants are judged on is their ability to co-fund. Delaney and Fahey (2005) note that Gaelic Games’ organisational strength is much greater than the relative number who engage in the sport. Its structure is based on a strong voluntarist community model of sports organisation. It may be thus that Gaelic Games excellent funding structures, through a large voluntarist section allow them to more successfully raise their own funding, thus better placing them to receive grants than other sporting codes.

However, given the funding which Gaelic Games, along with other sports have received over the period, has there been an increase in participation? A future blog will try to address this.

by Declan Jordan

A recent discussion on Newstalk’s Talking Points with Sarah Carey addressed the difficult issue of gambling addiction. It is very difficult to assess the scale of gambling addiction in Ireland (and elsewhere), particularly with the advent of online gambling websites and mobile phone apps. Gambling is a particularly invidious form of addiction. As pointed out in the radio discussion, gambling addiction is a silent and hidden disease – there is no smell on the breath or puncture marks in the skin to give it away. Addicts may believe that a way out of their problems is to ‘double down’ so that more gambling becomes the ‘solution’. It is unlikely that any alcoholic or drug addict believes that a way to solve their addiction problem is to drink more. Gambling is also a difficult addiction to address because it is not a substance introduced to a body, but rather is bound up with an individual's self-worth and need to be right.
 
As a society Ireland is coming to terms with its damaging drink culture. There is more education about the dangers of alcohol and there is an opening up about the problems of gambling addiction, with several high profile sportspeople now talking about how they suffered from their gambling problem.
 
This is not the case with gambling, and if anything we are normalizing gambling as an activity, just as we did (and to an extent still do) with binge drinking. The saturation coverage on all media of the Cheltenham festival is a perfect example. However, it is clear now that betting has infiltrated many parts of our national discourse with coverage of the recent election often showing the odds on different election outcomes and potential Taoisigh. Football on television has become an opportunity to bet as the game progresses with odds flashed on screen continuously during, for example, Sky Sports coverage. Of course, once you have a mobile phone then it is so easy to put down a stake.
 
Of course there are many (probably a majority of punters) who can control their gambling, just as there are a majority who can control their drinking. There is no way a prohibition on gambling makes any sense. Indeed there are many strong vested interests who would have a stake (pun intended) in keeping the gambling industry as strong as possible. The Irish government levies a 1% tax on bets (which in the last budget was extended to online betting). The take from this tax is paltry however.

Even this small amount is used to prop up the bloodstock and racing industries – irrespective of whether the bet being taxed was placed on horse racing or not. It’s fairly clear there are very strong vested interests at play here – and the popularity of horse racing in Ireland means the government continues to forego what could be a very profitable source of tax revenue. The ring-fencing of revenue from this tax for the horse racing and bloodstock industries also makes little sense. The value of bloodstock industry itself was estimated at €0.9bn in 2010. The industry receives approximately €11m from the betting tax (or approximately 1% of the industry value). Does this very successful industry require state support?
 
This boils to little more than a question of priorities however, until the issue of gambling addiction is considered. Whatever the scale of gambling addiction in Ireland, there can be no doubt that the gambling industry, and the sport of horse racing that relies on gambling to exist, have negative social external effects. The effects are more significant also because they are so highly concentrated, in that the damage done to individuals and families are catastrophic. An issue raised in the discussion on Newstalk was the lack of investment in gambling addiction support in Ireland. Potential solutions were in short supply, though it is clear that a large part of the solution must be internalizing the external costs of gambling. That means dramatically increasing the betting tax. There can be little justification for VAT rates of 21% and a betting tax rate of 1%. This could be paid by bookmakers (as is currently the case) or by punters. This could be supplemented by a levy on bookmakers’ profits. And instead of ring-fencing the income for investment in an industry that hardly needs such investment, the proceeds could instead by invested in gambling addiction counseling and other mental health supports.

by Declan Jordan

The General Election campaign is in full swing in Ireland. Each party has published their manifestos. What is in them for the Irish sports community?
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Fine Gael (the largest party in the current coalition government) proposes more physical education at primary school level and its introduction as a leaving certificate (high school) subject. They claim they will work with the Irish tourism promotion board to develop tourism in cycling, sailing, running and in adventure sports. They commit to an annualised round of sports capital grants. The party promises to produce a national sports strategy but there are no specific elements of that measure, though greater public use of the national sports campus facilities is suggested.

The Labour Party (the smaller party in the current coalition) always proposes a national sports strategy, though they indicate that, as part of that strategy there will be a specific sports bidding entity to facilitate bidding for events across all sporting organisations. The sports policy will also include elements to support sports tourism. In relation to sports capital grants they indicate that they will prioritise applications that are jointly submitted by sports clubs and schools to incentivise the facilities being available more generally to the public. They suggest a National Physcial Activity Plan which will have an objective to support the Special Olympics and increased participation in sport by females.
 
The Fianna Fail policies are framed largely in the context of improving health outcomes through encouraging physical activity. The plan around improving health includes taxes on sugar sweetened drinks, healthy eating programmes in schools, and strengthen local authorities’ powers to compulsorily purchase land for recreational use. The party promises to ‘phase out’ alcohol companies’ sponsorship of sporting events. They indicate that there will be an audit of NAMA properties to identify those suted for sports and recreation use and that “major construction project levies should integrate a contribution to locals sports clubs, such as land or monetary contributions”. The party will change the Sports Capital Grants system to allow funding of Community Centres, providing services to elderly social groups. It’s unclear if this will be mean a reduction in the money available to sports clubs.
 
Sinn Fein’s commitments on sport are contained in the section on building communities. The manifesto says they “ see sport as having a vital role in developing communities and want to ensure that investment is made in recreational sport first and foremost at community level; and that all sporting bodies, particularly at professional level, are properly funding and governed.” There is an unquantified commitment to invest in sport and another commitment to invest €42 million in sport at community level. This is in a section headed an all-island approach.
 
Renua Ireland is the only party to mention specific sports in their election manifesto. They have sections dedicated to Horse and Greyhound Racing and the Horse Sport Industry. To support these industries they propose increasing the betting levy from 1% to 3% and ringfencing the income for the sports. They state that “a senior level Department unit should be created to facilitate and drive government policy on the [thoroughbred] sector”. With specific reference to the showjumping, eventing and dressage sectors, they propose a four year tax incentive scheme “to attract investment in the sector, with a clear goal of garnering medals at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020”.Interestingly the policy also states in the section on the tax system, that “the only circumstance in which RENUA Ireland believes reliefs should be permissible is a situation where appalling economic planning has led to a market failure”.
 
The Social Democrats, a new party in this election, do not have any mention of sports in their manifesto. There were no mentions of sport in the manifesto of People Before Profit, and I couldn’t find a manifesto for their allies in the Anti-Austerity Alliance. 

By John Considine

In various blog posts I have pointed out how the allocation of Irish sports capital grants tend to have a geographical bias towards the county of the Minister for Sport (here, here and here).  It is, therefore, noteworthy that there seems to be an effort on the part of the current minister (Michael Ring) to address the issue in the 2014 round of grant allocations.

The 2014 round of grant allocations were announced last week.  This was the second round of grants made under this minister.  His first round was in December 2012 when he announced the local grants in early December and the non-local grants later in December.  The combined 2012 grant allocations looked as if they conformed to the previous pattern of political geographical bias.  The Minister's county (Mayo) received the third highest per person allocation.  Two other north-west counties (Sligo and Leitrim) filled the top two places when it came to per person allocations.

When the 2014 allocations are combined with the 2012 allocation, the per person allocation of Mayo does not standout from the pack.  Figure 1 below presents the combined allocations made by Minister Ring.  A feature of the allocations is the Minister's "Robin Hood" principle.  Those counties who did poorly between 1998-2011 got a little bit more under this minister (although Sligo and Leitrim remain out of line).  Minister Ring seems to be setting about correcting the previous bias.  He has got some deserved positive comments from the media in this respect (here).

It should also be noted that Minister Ring seems determined to make it clear that there was inappropriate allocations made under previous ministers.  In his usual spirited delivery, the Minister pointed out how a range of previous allocations were classified as "invalid" despite receiving grants.  As part of his reply to Fianna Fail's Timmy Dooley (here) he said,

"In 2007, when Deputy Dooley's party was in Government, the then Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism set the criteria and officials submitted the eligible applications.  I will outline some of the figures, as follows: Glebe Sport Holdings in Letterkenny was allocated €250,000 - invalid; Baltinglass GAA club, €50,000 - invalid; Kilmanamagh Family Recreation Centre, €175,000 -  invalid; St. Mary's GAA club in Cahersiveen, County Kerry - Deputy Dooley knows
who was Minister at the time - €300,000 - invalid; Farranfore Maine Valley AC, County Kerry, allocated €5,000 - insufficient own funding, invalid"

His reference to St Mary's GAA club is drawing attention to John O'Donoghue of Fianna Fail.  Previous posts have outlined the bias in the allocation when he was Minister for Sport.

There is a Cabinet reshuffle due in the coming days.  Minister Ring may, or may not, be moved from his current position.  Regardless, he can point out that when one looks at the combined 2012 and 2014 grant allocation, he outperformed many of his predecsssors when it came to giving a "fair" distribution to his county.

By John Considine

A Parliamentary Affairs article by Jane Suiter and Eoin O'Malley, available through the "advanced access", has some interesting findings about the allocation of sports grants in Ireland.  Suiter & O'Malley examine various explanations of how government expenditure on sports and education is geographically allocated.  They point out that the literature suggests that expenditure might be directed towards the government's core supporters, towards swing constitutencies, or it could be determined by the decision making rule.  They test these alternatives using Irish data.

They note that in the Irish political system "the minister, has clear and predictable incentives for targeting spending".  They also note that in The 2007 Irish Candidate Study "sports clubs and schools are the top two areas that legislators themselves believe it is worth claiming credit for".  Given Ireland Proportional Representation - Single Transferable Vote system, one might expect the government expenditure to be related to the geographic location of the deciding minister(s).

Suiter & O'Malley run three models to test if expenditure might be directed towards the government's core supporters, towards swing constitutencies, or if it is determined by the decision making rule.  The results of their tests are presented in the table below (Table 4).  The third model tests their suggestion that the decision rule is the most important.  They say their "results are both positive and highly significant and the model shows that constitutencies of the decision-making ministers do significantly better than other constituencies".  It seems the sports grants go to the constituency of the Minister for Sport and the Minister for Finance.

By John Considine

At the end of March, Sport England announced a cut to the funding of football.  The cut was based on the failure of the FA to increase participation.  The Guardian quoted the Chief Executive of Sport England, Jennie Price, as saying that the FA and the profesional clubs needed to work together to increase participation (here).  Owen Gibson's story explains how Sport England proposes to use the €1.6m cut from grassroots funding to fund a "football city" pilot for which cities can bid.  I was left thinking of the line attributed to Yogi Berra - "its deja vu all over again".

Another journalist from The Guardian, David Conn, has written on this subject before.  In his book Richer Than God he weaves together the many strands that go to make up the private and public funding of football.  Conn explain how the professional clubs suck in greater and great amounts of revenue while the facilities for local football are starved of cash.  Read his chapter on 'The Beautiful Game' for a grim account of the reality.  Elsewhere in the book Conn talks about how the public funding of the game has changed.  His explains how public funding has been rechannelled to special projects for which local authorities bid.  Ironically, it was Manchester's success in winning the Commonwealth Games that allowed them to build a stadium that was then handed over to Manchester City.  Private interests benefiting from special projects made possible from public funding.

In his recent piece Owen Gibson talks about football paying the price for delivering the promises of increased participation attached to the 2012 London Olympics.  That London 2012 failed to inspire a generation seems to be accepted.  Gibson himself wrote about it last December (here).  However, this was predictable.  In late 2011, Lord Moynihan, the chairman of the British Olympic Association, forecast that London 2012 would not increase participation because politicians failed to provide funding and a lack of links between schools, local sports clubs and volunteers (here).

Again, it is worth reading the account provided by David Conn in his book.  Conn talks about the lack of facilities at local level and contrasts this with what was spent on London 2012.  A Football Foundation commissioned survey estimated it would cost £2bn (later revised to £7bn) to bring the facilities up to a decent standard.  Conn also documents how prior to bidding for the Olympics, Tony Blair's strategy unit produced a document called 'Game Plan'.  Conn quotes a sentence from the review of the evidence and the conclusion reached in the document: "It would seem that hosting events is not an effective, value for money method of achieving a sustained increase in mass participation".  Yet, money that could have been spent to upgrade facilities was spent on the Olympics.  So, why should football (or any other sport) carry the can for over optimistic political promises and political failure to deliver the relevant resources?

Only last week Moody's brought us another reminder of the lure of bidding for international sporting events for questionable return (here).  Moody's estimate that the benefits to the Brazilian economy, from the FIFA World Cup, will be relatively small and temporary.  They also highlight the downside risks.  The demonstrations that surrounded last year's Confederations Cup in Brazil suggest that not all of the citizens agree with this type of public expenditure.

So what priorities have the public when it comes to public expenditure on sport?  Maybe they should be asked.  Thirteen years ago the Irish government commissioned a survey of public opinion on the issue.  Around that time the government was considering building a national stadium as a centre-piece of a sports campus in Abbotstown.  The government broadcast the results of one survey question.  That question asked if the public was in favour of the government plans for the stadium.  It was a Yes/No type of question.  Around 70% of the respondents were in favour of the stadium.  However, when the public was given a choice of how to allocate the funding the results were different.  One part of the survey asked the respondents to list their 1st and 2nd preferences for funding.  The results are presented in Figure 1 below.  'Facilities for Major Sports Events' and 'Major Facilities in One Centre' did not seem to be high on the Irish public list of priorities for the allocation of public funds.

For a variety of reasons the stadium at Abbotstown was never built.  Instead, Lansdowne Road was renovated.  In the years that followed, the government provided large amounts of funding for facilities at local level.  While the geographical allocation of some of the funds might display a political bias, there is little doubt that many of the facilities around the country improved.  The Irish policymakers deserve credit for shelving plans for a third major stadium in Dublin (regardless of the exact reasons for the decision).  They also deserve credit for increasing the funding for other facilities.  It is only fair that if we blame them for the rain then we give them credit for the sunshine.

By Eoin Whyte, University of Limerick

By John Considine

In a previous post (here) I examined the geographical distribution of the 2012 Sports Capital Grants.  The top five counties in terms of per person allocations were Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo, Kilkenny and Cavan. These counties also did relatively well when it came to the Local Sports Partnership funding by the Irish Sports Council last week (here).

The table opposite reveals that the Leitrim, Sligo, Longford, and North Tipperary got the highest per person funding whereas Dublin City, South Dublin and Fingal got the lowest per person funding.  Leitrim is getting €4.36 per person whereas Dublin City is getting one-tenth of that (€0.43).  This is a massive difference in per person funding.  Initially, I believed that these results might be purely driven by the population of each region.  However, population only explains only part of the difference.  If we examine the column with the absolute amount of LSP funding going to Leitrim we can see it is getting €138,735 for a population of 31,794.  By contrast, South Dublin is getting €127,580 for a population 8 times larger than Leitrim.  Sligo has a population of 65,393 according to the 2011 Census of Population.  Sligo is going to get €242,556 in Local Sports Partnership funding for 2014.  This is a larger absolute amount than Dublin City, South Dublin and Fingal.  These regions have populations of double and triple that of Sligo.  The result is that Sligo is getting €3.71 per person while South Dublin is getting €0.48 per person.

When compared to other areas of funding, Local Sports Partnership have not been hit as badly by the current fiscal crisis as some other areas of Irish Sports Council funded sport.  One third of the regions (10 out of 30) have a higher level of funding in 2014 than they had in 2011.  The table opposite presents those regions with the largest increases and  decreases.  Again, Leitrim has cause for celebration.  Cavan, Mayo and Wicklow did even better.  Unfortunately for Dublin City, it is again at the wrong end of the table.  It lies in third last position with its 2014 funding 82.4% of its 2011 amount.

Regardless of whether it is Sports Capital Grants (allocated directly by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport) or Local Sports Partnership funding (allocated by the Irish Sports Council) it seems that Leitrim, Sligo, Cavan and Mayo are amongst the best for attracting sports funding.

A government idea to use the tax system as a vehicle to boost the Olympic legacy by awarding tax breaks worth up to £50,000 is under way in the U.K. The story can be read here  and here.To get an idea of the mechanics of the changes see here