Even by Mayo’s standards, it was an eventful few days. As the county came to terms with their footballers’ unexpected home defeat by Cavan on the first weekend of the All-Ireland series, word emerged on the Friday of last week that GAA president Jarlath Burns and director general Tom Ryan would be arriving in Westport’s Knockranny House Hotel the following Monday to attend an extraordinary meeting of the Mayo county committee.
Speculation was that they would be addressing financial issues, believed to centre on allegations that included a charge that Croke Park had not passed a reduction negotiated with the bank after it had assumed responsibility for loans taken out by Mayo.
By then football manager Kevin McStay had suffered a medical episode at training last Saturday and it was announced just before Monday’s meeting that he would be stepping back from his involvement with the team, leaving assistant and coach Stephen Rochford in charge of affairs for this weekend’s critical group match against Tyrone in Omagh.
How did we get here?
The problem began with the redevelopment of MacHale Park in Castlebar, which was completed at a cost of €18 million and opened in 2009, not great timing in financial terms.
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By 2014, Croke Park had loaned Mayo €5 million and taken over an additional, consolidated €5 million as part of a scheme to alleviate distressed loans to GAA units. Last Monday, the GAA’s most senior officials were attending the meeting in Westport to deal, inter alia, with allegations that a debt “haircut” of 50 per cent had not been passed on to the county.
What happened?
GAA director general (DG) Tom Ryan dealt with the matter of the loan – eventually – after the meeting had opened with condemnation of the intimidatory treatment suffered on social media by county officers and others in the GAA.
Ryan, previously the association’s director of finance, explained that the outstanding loan, confirmed at €7.8 million, was based on the original total of €10 million – two loans at €5 million each, the second, Loan B, of which had been taken over from Ulster Bank.
He strenuously denied that Croke Park had failed to extend the whole reduction to Mayo, saying that it in fact represented “one of the highest single-value discounts” obtained by any GAA unit.
But what does that mean?
Ryan outlined that a €1 million reduction on Loan B had been secured, in other words 20 per cent, as opposed to the alleged 50 per cent. The €1 million remains on the balance sheet but reduces as the rest of the loan is paid. Repayments have been brought down over the past 10 years from €46,000 per month to the current €25,000, now payable over 32 years at 1.9 per cent.
The DG has a reputation for measured presentation and was very effective, for instance, when the GAA were before the Oireachtas committee on sport and media for its hearings on the “future of sports broadcasting” and more specifically the GAAGO streaming service.
Those present were largely convinced by what he had to say on the loan and the passing on of the discount.
Everyone is happy, so?
Although there was no counting of hands, there is believed to have been more or less unanimous support for the officers at a vote taken afterwards. Delegates, who were looking for dissent, report that they didn’t see hands not raised and no objections were raised.
There is a difference of opinion though between those who attended the meeting, who were impressed and persuaded by Ryan’s presentation, and those who weren’t present, some of whom felt unconvinced by what they heard back and viewed as vague details.
As one said, the priority should have been to equip members with the tools to refute the rumours, which they felt hadn’t been done.
One delegate acknowledged that financial details can be hard for delegates. “They come from clubs, which have a different approach. You fundraise – you build. You’re not dealing with balance sheets. You’re dealing with a set of accounts,” the delegate said.
This isn’t peculiar to Mayo but a fact of life in a voluntary organisation where there is a growing list of demands on the time of officers given the expanding governance requirement.
To cope with this, counties are now required to have an audit and risk committee to advise the treasurer on governance matters and to report back at least annually to provincial and national equivalents.
How did abusive social media activity become an issue?
After this year’s league final in which Kerry beat Mayo, Burns in his presentation speech expressed support for and solidarity with Mayo officers, who had been under fire because of these allegations.
At Monday night’s meeting, this online hostility was highlighted with examples shown to delegates in an unexpected presentation by county secretary Ronan Kirrane.
County chairman Seamus Tuohy said: “The nature of this campaign includes threatening and abusive emails targeted at individual members of the county board, social media posts making a raft of false accusations about officers of the county board as well as inaccurate and defamatory articles that were published online.”
Burns added that the communications had “gone way beyond” anything that could be “considered acceptable.”
Was the initial emphasis on the abuse of officers counterproductive?
For some outside the meeting it was unhelpful, generating too much smoke and giving the opportunity to depict it as deflection. For others in attendance, it was of sufficient scale and gravity to merit being raised. Not everyone would have been familiar with what had happened. “It was shocking,” according to one of those present.
What about the five players?
A strange addendum to the presentation on abuse of officers came from Burns.
“I’ll tell you one example of toxic activity,” he said. “I received an email saying ‘are you aware that there are five members of the Mayo senior football panel living in Dublin in an area where it is not laid out for residential use? I am reporting those five players to Dublin City Council.’”
The players under threat left what is believed to have been a customised warehouse space but for some of those present, it was an odd line to take. After all, in this case the whistle-blowing appeared to be justified.
“If I were Mayo GAA, I’d be ashamed that our players were living in those conditions,” said one, “and not drawing attention to it.”
What now?
Nobody is quite sure whether enough has been done to quell any disquiet but delegates and officers clearly want to move on. There have been recent suggestions that the county might commit €15 million to a centre of excellence, the lack of which former Mayo manager James Horan recently lamented on the Examiner football podcast.
Presumably, with a legacy debt hanging around – albeit with flattened repayments – for another three decades, a major infrastructural project would have to be funded in advance.
