By John Considine
In 2008 I published a paper with a number of colleagues in Economic Affairs. The paper was titled 'Irish National Lottery Sports Capital Grant Allocations 1999-2007: Natural Experiments on Political Influence'. The paper examined what happened to the geographical distribution of sports capital grants when there was ministerial change. The two ministerial changes examine were (i) a change in the Minister for Sport and (ii) a change in the Minister for Finance. The paper claimed there was evidence of political bias in the funding. Jane Suiter and Eoin O'Malley used a more sophisticated statistical approach on the 2002-2007 grants and found similar results (see previous blog post here). This post outlines the evidence from our Economic Affairs paper and adds another natural experiment with 2012 data.
Sport grant applications for National Lottery funding are sorted and assessed by county. There are 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland. The counties can be seen in the map opposite. Those in the Republic of Ireland are in dark green. At the time of our 2008 publication the counties of interest were Donegal and Kerry in respect of the Minister for Sport and Kildare and Offaly for the Ministers for Finance. Donegal and Kerry are located on the western side of the country whereas Kildare and Offaly are located in the midland/east of the country.
Table 1 shows what happened when there was a change in the Minister for Sport. While the Minister for Sport came from Donegal, that county had the highest per person ranking of the 26 counties. When he was replaced by a Minister from Kerry then Kerry jumped to the number 1 spot and Donegal slipped to 23rd out of the 26 counties.
Sport grant applications for National Lottery funding are sorted and assessed by county. There are 26 counties in the Republic of Ireland. The counties can be seen in the map opposite. Those in the Republic of Ireland are in dark green. At the time of our 2008 publication the counties of interest were Donegal and Kerry in respect of the Minister for Sport and Kildare and Offaly for the Ministers for Finance. Donegal and Kerry are located on the western side of the country whereas Kildare and Offaly are located in the midland/east of the country.
Table 1 shows what happened when there was a change in the Minister for Sport. While the Minister for Sport came from Donegal, that county had the highest per person ranking of the 26 counties. When he was replaced by a Minister from Kerry then Kerry jumped to the number 1 spot and Donegal slipped to 23rd out of the 26 counties.
Our second "natural experiment" looked at what happened when the Minister for Finance changed. Our results in Table 2 below show that while the Minister was from Kildare then Kildare received the second highest per person allocation of sports capital grants. When this minister left office, Kildare dropped to 26th (or last). The Minister for Finance for the 2005-7 grant allocations was from Offaly. This county had previously been 20th in the ranking. It jumped to 4th while its native son was in Finance.
As economists these results seemed to suggest to us that the behaviour of politicians might be rational and self-interested. There was no moral outrage in the paper. It seemed to us that the incentives were such that the outcome was fairly predictable.
The National Lottery was started in 1986. It was only in its infancy when politicians complained about the use of National Lottery funds. In 1988 Mary Harney (Progressive Democrats) claimed that "Fianna Fail have engaged in the most despicable exercise in gombeen politics ever seen in this country in the way they have handled the allocations from the national lottery" (here). A couple of year later the Progressive Democrats were in government with Fianna Fail. Now it was the turn of Alan Shatter (Fine Gael) to remind Mary Harney and her Progressive Democrat colleagues of her previous words (here). He finished with a flourish saying "The horse of political patronage will once again be ridden and the Minister, Deputy Flynn, like the Lone Ranger of old, will gallop off into the sunset with his faithful Tonto, Deputy Harney, the Minister of State, galloping along beside him". It would seem that Fianna Fail was the force corrupting all who came in contact with them. Tables 1 and 2 above might support that view as all four Ministers were from that political stable.
In 2012 Alan Shatter's political party was the largest party in a coalition government between Fine Gael and Labour. Alan Shatter himself was Minister for Justice. Sport was being catered for by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. One of the junior ministers in the Department was responsible for allocating the sports capital grants. The Minister come from Mayo. This gives us our third natural experiment. It is presented in Table 3. The data is that produced by the Department during 2012. Galway and Mayo are listed as having received €132 for the 1998-2011 period so Mayo is 15th or 16th (joint 15th).
The National Lottery was started in 1986. It was only in its infancy when politicians complained about the use of National Lottery funds. In 1988 Mary Harney (Progressive Democrats) claimed that "Fianna Fail have engaged in the most despicable exercise in gombeen politics ever seen in this country in the way they have handled the allocations from the national lottery" (here). A couple of year later the Progressive Democrats were in government with Fianna Fail. Now it was the turn of Alan Shatter (Fine Gael) to remind Mary Harney and her Progressive Democrat colleagues of her previous words (here). He finished with a flourish saying "The horse of political patronage will once again be ridden and the Minister, Deputy Flynn, like the Lone Ranger of old, will gallop off into the sunset with his faithful Tonto, Deputy Harney, the Minister of State, galloping along beside him". It would seem that Fianna Fail was the force corrupting all who came in contact with them. Tables 1 and 2 above might support that view as all four Ministers were from that political stable.
In 2012 Alan Shatter's political party was the largest party in a coalition government between Fine Gael and Labour. Alan Shatter himself was Minister for Justice. Sport was being catered for by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. One of the junior ministers in the Department was responsible for allocating the sports capital grants. The Minister come from Mayo. This gives us our third natural experiment. It is presented in Table 3. The data is that produced by the Department during 2012. Galway and Mayo are listed as having received €132 for the 1998-2011 period so Mayo is 15th or 16th (joint 15th).
Maybe in future rounds, a rule limiting the dispersion of per person county allocations will be formalised. It should apply to ALL sports capital grants and not some or most of them. It should not be the case that it will apply to 85% of the grants. It should apply to 100%. The omens are promising. Last Sunday, speaking on RTE's The Week in Politics, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Leo Varadkar, said "... also we need cultural change. You know too much in Ireland, and its not just a Garda issue, we still have a culture of doing favours, the nod and the wink, use of discretion, those type of things. And we need now, over the next ten or twenty years, to move to a rules based society so that this kind of stuff doesn't happen anymore. And it is not just about the Gardai it is about politics in general ..". Let's not wait for 10 or 20 years. The Minister would set a good example by starting in his own department and ensuring that there is limited Ministerial discretion on the allocation of ALL sports capital grants.
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