No issues with Revenue for Kildare GAA

While the County Boards of Mayo GAA and Galway GAA have decided to put a pause on signing their annual accounts due to reviews by Revenue of certain payments such as Cúl Camp staff, and Wexford GAA have admitted to similar issues, the Kildare Nationalist understands that Kildare is not one of a number of counties currently being audited by the Revenue in relation to such matters.

The annual accounts were signed by the County Board and auditors Forvis Mazars and will be presented to delegates at next Wednesday’s Annual Convention.

The accounts show that the cost of re-developing Cedral St Conleth’s Park has left Kildare GAA having to rely on funding from overseas investors under the government’s controversial Immigrant Investor Programme (IIP) to pay debts that fall due over the next twelve months.

The figures do, however, show a healthy operating surplus of just under €1.6m, with €1.2m coming from the IIP. Income was €2.9m excluding the IIP funding, virtually unchanged from 2023 with expenditure up from €2.35m to €2.54m.

However, capital expenditure on the re-development of the County Grounds has pushed the County Board to a €2m Net Current Liability position on its Balance Sheet with liabilities of €3.77m falling due in the next year and only €1.74m available in current assets to pay those liabilities as of 30th September.

That situation has caused the Management Committee to make a specific “Going Concern” statement in the annual accounts which states that “Management are confident that the County Committee will receive sufficient funding from the Immigrant Investor Programme in the next financial year such that the liabilities of the County Committee can be settled as they fall due within 12 months from the date of signing the accounts.” No figure is provided for the expected funding from the scheme over the next twelve months. Kildare have received €1.6m to date from this source towards the re-development costs.

The programme, which was set up in 2012 to encourage inward investment, provided residence visas to investors from outside the EU, but was abruptly closed by the Government in February of last year on the grounds that the economy no longer needed the investment and in recognition of concerns expressed by the EU, among others, in relation to border security, money laundering, tax evasion and circumvention of EU law, according to the Department of Justice.

It has been reported that the vast majority of investors in the overall programme were of Chinese nationality.

Meanwhile, Kildare GAA saw the expense of running their inter-county teams rise by 9% to just over €1m in 2024 with the costs of wages and salaries also increasing by 16% from €243k to €282k due to a higher cost of coaching and games development staff.

The spend on inter-county teams remains relatively low when compared nationally with Limerick, Galway and Kerry all spending over €2m in 2023 while some eighteen counties spent over €1m.

For the first time, Kildare have broken out their team preparation expenses of €1.028m between the Senior Footballers, Senior Hurlers and underage/development panels. The Senior Footballers cost €411k, the Senior Hurlers €347k and all other panels €270k.

The Senior Football cost was so much higher than their hurling counterparts primarily due to the cost of management and selectors.

Glenn Ryan and his four selectors, Colm Nally, Anthony Rainbow, John Doyle and Brian Lacey cost €95k, while hurling manager Brian Dowling and selectors Nigel O’Hara and Richie Ruth cost €59k.

Elsewhere, Kildare GAA have announced that they will play a challenge game against Galway on Saturday 4 January in Cedral St Conleths Park at 7.30pm and tickets can be purchased here