DONEGAL county board chairman Seán Dunnion believes they, along with Cavan and Monaghan, should feel particularly sore about the fact Dublin received more for games development in 2015 than the province of Ulster combined.
The GAA’s financial report, made public last week, revealed Dublin received €1,460,400 from the association last year, compared to €1,273,665 for Ulster. Tir Chonaill received €40,200 of that, and Dunnion said that was harder to take as they had fewer avenues to go down than the majority of their neighbouring counties.
“We’re particularly disadvantaged with regards to funding being one of the three counties in Ulster outside the Six Counties,” he said.
“They’re getting a lot of money pumped in through the various departments in the Ulster Council. It comes with the condition that it can only be spent in the Six Counties. We’re certainly at a disadvantage - ourselves, Cavan and Monaghan - with regards to the funding that comes out of Ulster even. We have been making representation along those lines recently.”
GAA president Aogan O Fearghail defended the breakdown in spending by pointing to the good work being done by coaches in Dublin, particularly in areas where the association has often struggled. Dunnion, however, believes everyone needs that assistance and pointed to the geographical make-up of Donegal that has left their coaches covering large areas of the county.
“It’s a huge disadvantage [the distances between clubs],” said Dunnion.
“We actually just launched a new coaching plan towards the end of last year. We really need to enhance the coaching we have in the county because we have only a small number of full-time coaches, a few part-time coaches and we really had to dip into our own resources.
“That’s more money that has to be found but we recongise that we need to put more money into coaching. In fairness to the Ulster Council, when we made representation to them they have made an additional contribution towards us for the next two years.”
Dunnion has warned counties could fall even further behind if the problem is not rectified, but also added it doesn’t necessarily mean Dublin’s share should be reduced: "You’d have to ask the question if Dublin are getting 43 per cent of the coaching money and you look at their strength at the moment.
“There certainly is an imbalance and that needs to be readdressed in some fashion because Dublin are only going to continue to get stronger if we don’t invest more in the other counties. Dublin is a huge county with a huge population, but our take on it would be that we would like to get more finance into the county for coaching.
“We believe that we need more, we would really be thin on the ground with full-time coaches in the county. We would certainly be advocating for more funding, whether the right thing is to take it off Dublin and give it to the other counties, I don’t know.”
