Exchequer Funding of Irish Sport

By John Considine

For the decade 2002-2011 a total of €1.38bn was spent on sport in Ireland by the Department of "Sport".  Currently, sport is included in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and it was previously under the Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism.  It is this expenditure that we classify here as Exchequer expenditure on sport (it is known as Voted expenditure).  It does not include funding via other government departments or via Local Authorities.

Table 1 presents the Exchequer expenditure on sport and its decomposition for the period 2002-11.  The amount is €1.38bn excluding the Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund (HGRF) and it rises to €2.05bn. It is debatable whether HGRF should be included. Even the government seems to be unsure about  the correct classification of the HGRF.  For almost half the decade 2002-11 public expenditure on  the HGRF was included in the sports vote where as in the other years it was  included in the Department of Agriculture vote. While what follows will exclude HGRF as sports expenditure it is worth briefly comparing the expenditure on the HGRF and that given the Irish Sports Council (ISC). Table 1 shows that  current expenditure on HGRF was bigger than that for the ISC.

In addition to the total expenditure on sport of €1.38bn over ten years, there are a number of feature of Table 1 worth noting. First, capital expenditure is larger than current expenditure. This is unusual in terms of total voted expenditure as current expenditure is a multiple of capital expenditure when one considers all voted expenditure. Second, there are a number of once-off items of capital expenditure. While it could be argued that much capital expenditure is once-off, the expenditure on Lansdowne Road and the Special Olympics are unlikely to be repeated in the decades to come. A somewhat similar argument could be made about the National Sports Campus where significant investment was made during a period when it seemed it was going to also have a stadium. Third, the two largest items namely Grants to Sporting Bodies and the Irish Sports Council account for over 70% of the expenditure. Fourth, Grants to Disadvantaged Area is given only a tiny proportion of the expenditure.

The annual amount given to sport varied over the decade. The variation tended to be driven by once-off capital projects like the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road and the boom-bust cycle of recent patterns of expenditure by Irish governments.  The increase and decrease in time profile of the expenditure in Table 1 are presented in Figure 1. For ease of comparison, the amounts are normalised to 100 for the first year of the decade under consideration.

Figure 1: Exchequer Expenditure on Sport via Votes 31 and 35 Compared to All Voted Exchequer Expenditure, Base 2002 = 100.

Gross expenditure, on all voted expenditure, was almost €36bn in 2002. It increased to 180% of it 2002 total by 2009 before starting to decline again as the government sought to address the fiscal crisis. Sport expenditure was almost €153m in 2002. It declines in 2003 to under 80% as the expenditure on Sports Campus Ireland collapsed from over €46m in 2002 to just over €6m in 2003, Sport expenditure only surpassed the 2002 level in 2007 and 2008 when it was driven by spending on the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road. Sport expenditure also seems to have suffered from the cuts to public expenditure that formed part of the government efforts to adjust it fiscal policy to a more sustainable one. It is possible to decompose the annual expenditure on sport among its component parts. This is done in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Decomposition of Expenditure on Sport 2002-2011

Figure 2 shows the variability of the composition of sports expenditure. For example, in 2002 almost 40% of the expenditure on sport was devoted to the National Sports Campus and the Special Olympics. The amount devoted to these two items dropped dramatically in 2003 and virtually disappeared in 2004. While there is expenditure on redevelopment of Lansdowne Road in six of the ten years, the majority of that expenditure takes place in 2007 and 2008. In 2008 40% of all expenditure on sport goes to Lansdowne Road.

The relative constants in Figure 2 are the Irish Sports Council, Grants to Sporting Bodies, and Grants for Swimming Pools. The patterns in Figure 2 suggest that the Irish Sports Council is getting an increasing share of the sports allocation particularly since 2009. This is correct. However, it should be remembered that its share is increasing as the overall expenditure on sport is declining. In fact, the ISC share of sports expenditure since 2009 is increasing while the actual amount given to the ISC is declining. In 2009 the ISC received €51.7 and this declined to €44.5m in 2011.