Exactly how much is Ireland paying to host the Ryder Cup golf tournament at Adare Manor in 2027? It’s a question that Alan Kelly, the Labour Party TD, put to officials at the Public Accounts Committee last month. While they were able to tell him that €31 million of State cash is going to the European Tour, including a licence fee of €22.5 million, they had no idea how much the venue itself is paying.
“We will revert to the Deputy on this,” said Katherine Licken, secretary general of the Department of Tourism. “We certainly do not have figures here.” The department has now reverted to Kelly, but not with details of Adare Manor’s contribution. “Despite asking very clearly for the full information, the department came back late and with an incomplete reply,” the TD told Any Other Business. “I will be asking again through the committee for this to be dealt with.” Maybe the department, like us, got no response from JP McManus’s resort when they posed the question.
One new figure Kelly did obtain, however, is that the government has agreed to allocate €14.275 million to support staging the event, including transport, security, local authority costs and fan zones.
“There is no doubt the venue will benefit from the investment the State is making,” the department has told the Public Accounts Committee, “but so also will many golf venues, accommodation providers and businesses generally throughout the region and beyond.” Sure, but if the State is paying the entire cost of bringing the Ryder Cup to Ireland, in the interests of openness and transparency, shouldn’t we be told?
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RTÉ’s pension scheme in top condition
Unlike the broadcaster itself, the RTÉ pension scheme is awash with cash. With assets of €1.2 billion and liabilities of €0.83 billion, there’s plenty of leeway to top up the pensions of its members. Any increase must be approved by both the Minister for Arts and the Minister for Public Expenditure, however, which is a slow and convoluted process. Since 2008, members of the RTÉ Superannuation Scheme have had just one increase – of 2 per cent in 2022, which the trustees had applied for about 18 months earlier.
Unlike the RTÉ stars, the 1,596 pensioners in the scheme are not well remunerated. “The RTÉ pension is normally their only source of income, as RTÉ’s employees were not allowed to pay a full PRSI stamp to qualify for the contributory old-age pension,” Stephanie Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson for the RTÉ Retired Staff Association, points out. “Over one-third are on pensions of less than €20,000.”
Last September, as inflation soared and the elderly pensioners suffered a decrease in their standard of living, the trustees applied to Catherine Martin, the media minister, for a once-off 2.5 per cent increase. That would cost about €20 million, a tiny proportion of the available surplus assets of more than €300 million. Martin has told the Dáil she is being advised by the National Treasury Management Agency’s New ERA unit in relation to the request, and is still considering it. Only when she is finished can the application go to Paschal Donohoe.
Documents released to us under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that New Era “has raised concerns about the risk of RTÉ having to provide additional funding” to the pension scheme. Yet the need for a bailout seems remote, especially as the scheme was closed to new members in 1989.
Meanwhile RTÉ still has to choose a new chair for the scheme, after Conor Hayes, the former chief financial officer and former Ryanair chief executive, stepped down as a trustee last December. Paula Mullooly, RTÉ’s director of legal affairs, has been appointed temporary chair.
Conor Faughnan takes the wheel at RIAC
Conor Faughnan, the former director of AA Ireland, has changed lanes and become chief executive of the Royal Irish Automobile Club (RIAC), one of the oldest clubs of its kind in the world. The high-profile appointment follows the collapse last year of a plan by the RIAC and investment group Tetrarch Capital to redevelop their adjoining premises on Dawson Street in Dublin. While it had won planning approval, the joint scheme was abandoned due to a €14 million rise in construction costs during Covid.
“That would have been a great solution for the RIAC, but it is not now happening, so we have to make fresh plans for our own future,” Faughnan tells me. “It’s a marvellous place, steeped in history, and there’s rich potential for the club and the organisation to grow.”
Faughan describes the RIAC’s relatively small membership as “loyal” and “engaged”, but agrees an influx of young recruits is needed. “It has the potential to offer more at its premises – meeting rooms, private dining, a hot-desking site for people in town, hosting private functions,” he enthuses.
“There’s a tremendous amount the RIAC could offer a young urban professional type. Even as I say that, an antiquated grandfather clock is chiming in the background. It is a bit old world, but redolent with charm.”
Ryanair plots taking its social media snark on tour
If you see a comedy act at Edinburgh next month doing gags about window seats, baggage allowances and priority boarding, it might be Ryanair’s social media team. Michael Corcoran, the airline’s head of social and creative content, says they’re being encouraged by fans to do a roasting sketch at the festival.
“We have got requests to actually do a gig at Edinburgh, not officially [but] people on the internet have always referenced it,” Corcoran has told the Social Creatures podcast. “I was like, ‘that’s a great activation. Maybe we should’.” He is keen to protect the anonymity of Ryanair’s social media team, so they don’t get trolled in their personal lives. “But maybe we could costume it up, and find ways to do it,” he mused.
Corcoran also noted that Ryanair’s vision was to be the most talked-about brand on social media and “our director feels we’ve kind of hit that mark already”. Just the sort of modesty we have come to expect from Europe’s most understated airline.
Irish connection to US security investigation
US government officials are investigating land acquisitions by a company with Irish links near an air force base in San Francisco. The concern is that foreign interests could be behind Flannery Associates, which has spent almost $1 billion in the last five years in Solano County, California.
A lawyer representing Flannery told the Wall Street Journal that 97 per cent of its invested capital comes from Americans, with the remaining 3 per cent from British and Irish, but he wouldn’t give more details. The air force’s foreign investment risk review office, which has been investigating for eight months, has not been able to work out exactly who is behind the group, according to sources quoted by the newspaper.
“Nobody can figure out who they are,” said Ronald Knott, the mayor of Rio Vista. “Whatever they’re doing, this looks like a very long-term play.”
An Irish investor involved in a long-term play by buying land near an airport? That rang a bell. So we contacted Ulick McEvaddy, the businessman currently selling land between the runways at Dublin Airport which he acquired in 1995 with the idea of building a terminal on it. “It’s not us anyway,” McEvaddy said in relation to California. “I will check it out with my team in the US.”
Gresham House sale won’t impact Coillte deal
A political row erupted in January when Coillte, the State agency, did a forestry deal with a British private equity firm. In vain did Gresham House explain that just was a regular institutional capital-funding arrangement, whereby it would set up an Irish-registered entity, the Irish Strategic Forestry Fund (ISFF), that would raise €200 million to buy about 8,500 hectares of existing forestry from farmers and private landowners.
Sinn Féin’s Réada Cronin said the deal was “downright disrespectful and unpatriotic”, while Richard Boyd Barrett, a People before Profit TD, said Coillte were facilitating “profiteering UK vulture funds”.
Make that a profiteering US equity fund, since Gresham House is now being sold to Searchlight Capital Partners for about £470 million (€542 million). Might this change the forestry deal? A company spokesman told us: “There will be no impact on the agreement with ISFF. It is business as usual, and Gresham House is committed to executing its current strategy.”
Coillte added: “It is important to note that Gresham House is the fund manager, not the owner of the land. The investors in the fund own the land.”
