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| Father Ted says it best |
Readers outside Ireland might be wondering what's taken over my head, but it's impossible to think of anything else here. Stats on the "Irish Sports Council" site show that sports only contribute " 2% of the overall value of consumer spending in the economy" which surprised me (yes, I live in a sports-bubble) but with 1.7 million people involved the impact goes far beyond money.
Now with some reports saying about 20% of overall sports funding was cut in this week's Budget, what will this mean for sports people?
And can anyone explain to me why the Horse and Greyhound Racing Fund - already topped up by €545.8m - gets another 58 million in the middle of all this?
4 comments
My long complaint about the Sports Council is the ridiculous proportion of funds that goes towards Horse Racing and Greyhound Racing. Sports with far higher participation numbers, far greater levels of fan interest, and frankly far more relevant as sports should be getting a much larger piece of the pie than these two areas.
Yes, I fully agree! I love horses, but this sport is elitist/involves a limited number of expert people and benefits people outside the country as much if not more than people here. I've been reading about the breakdown of betting spends, it's not good for the Irish economy but thanks to some cosy agreements just floats on and on and on....sorry, rant alert!
It's the same thing with the Film Board, I suppose - where is the material value, when you need to measure the pennies? That's the problem, arguably, there's no way to measure the countless imperceptable differences it makes to people everyday.
On the upside, the Film Board was lucky in the budget. To quote one executive, "a 4% cut is like an increase".
Ouch!
Thanks for dropping by though! And it's a good point, and one I suppose many racing folk would make back at me as well. Like the quote even if it is a shame we need to laugh about these things - if you didn't laugh you'd cry!
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