IrishFreestyle

From canoe.ie

Executive

The Executive is responsible for the day to day financial and administrative affairs of the Union, employment of staff, and the achievement of the Union's policies and objectives.

Aims and objectives of the Irish Canoe Union:

• The promotion of canoeing in all its forms. 
• To organise and assist in promoting and organising competitive and recreational canoeing events. 
• To select, train, and administer competitors to represent Ireland at international events. 
• To arrange and provide the holding of instruction in canoeing skills and techniques, the establishment and conduct of a system of tests and qualifications, and the promotion of safety. 
• To issue guidelines and make regulations for all forms of canoeing as appropriate and to encourage the observance by canoeists of a code of conduct. 
• To protect the interests of canoeists and to work for improved facilities. 
• To support administrative or legislative measures which will improve facilities for canoeing and to act to prevent the introduction of such measures injurious to the sport. 
• To create and promote by publicity and education an informed and interested public opinion of the value and importance of canoeing in all its forms. 
• To provide and supply information and advice to members by means of books, periodicals and other methods. 
• To provide services as far as possible and appropriate for other organisations, clubs and persons interested in or associated with the sport and recreation of canoeing.

Currently the Freestyle committee have a good relationship with the ICU. They provide

• funding for Freestyle teams to go to international events
• help orgainising Freestyle event
• insurance cover for Freestyle events
• water release for the Liffey for Sluice events
• assistence with purchases and finance

So, the freestyle community does benefit from ICU activities mainly through support given to the IFS committee.

But, there are alot of paddlers out there that IFS represents that don't benefit from these ICU supports.

The IFS committee represent the whole community and would like to hear your opinions on

http://www.irishwhitewater.com/files/icu/ICU-Recommendationspdf.pdf

Do any of these apply to the IFS community? 

Are there any other ideas or recomendations you may have regarding the ICU that we could bring to the AGM for debate and discussion.

 Thanks

Brian

To start the ball rolling i was thinking, i haven't debated with anyone yet, that a Freestyle curriculum could be developed and then taught under the the ICU Awards and Qualifications.

http://canoe.ie/AwardsQualifications/SkillsAwards/tabid/978/language/en-IE/Default.aspx

As well as skills awards, Freestyle Instructos training could be developed.

The pros of this would be to

• Get a more structured approach to develop freestyle skills
• Get properly qualified instructor to teach these skills to others

Cons

• Making the Freestyle to formal, its ment to be about getting out mucking about on a wave or a hole and having fun.
• Too much cost involved to get al the levels of qualifications

Just an idea, what do ye think?

 That's a good idea but I doubt the ICU will take it on. They are not a very proactive bunch.

With hundreds maybe even thousands of disaffected recreational paddlers around the country already its hard to see it happen.

Sean Byrnes recommendations are not extraordinary in any way and if the ICU was a business well loosing that many customers and showing very little in the books to investors would be raising alarm bells big time.

Yes I do ICU bashing. In 20 years of paddling the organisation has hardly come up on the radar for me.

Things that are important to recreational paddlers like access and approaching local councils for facilities around the more popular stretches of river just don't seem to happen. If these thing are being worked on in the background why the secret ?

Where is the output from them ? In all honesty the only thing I've seen in the public domain from then over the last few years is a submission to a coroners court.

They need to get their house in order and do some serious public relations or just go away and die and let something better rise from the ashes at this stage.

 It's early I'm cranky and i'll get back to this when I'm awake

Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

Clarity of the accounts, or lack thereof seem to be an obvious proposal - in doing this it would mean a cleaner more see through union.

 financials year end 2006 - HP grants of 307,017 who gets this? who are these people? even if to say fair play to them/ make them more public/ acknowledge them as HP athletes furthering their kayaking career likewise 98,000 on the carding system.

22,000 on international events? like what/ where -

Loan repayments - for what/ where

Why was 77k of the grant carried over? I have no doubt there are kayakers/ national competitions that would be more than happy to accept even a small fraction of this..

Are for staff wages as a lump sum of 204,567 - how is this broken down per person?

HP coaches sum of 53,463 who are these coaches or it doesn't even state the qty of coaches on the financials. Seperate to this which discipline are they employed for? Can other ICU members avail of their services?

Telephone 12k - Is this office and mobile?

 Advertising 1200 - This should be far in excess of this quantity! No wonder memberships are down. This has a knock on effect for sponsorship  - ICU received only 8k sponsorship / general public are not seeing canoeing advertised/ There shold be a big capitalisation of Eoin's success in leaflets to schools on joining your local kayak club, simple but effective.

The grant application noted that a PA & financial controlled to be created as a permanent post - has this been filled? it would certainly help to sort above out.... The idea's are just in the application but the action & implementation seems far behind.

Hey,

 JK i haven't submitted the motion yet, but the Freestyle will be compiling a list of motion that will be submitted before the 29th of Sept.

 Delly, i defo agree with you. There definetly needs to be more detail and breakdown given in the accounts. IT definetly doesn't promote transparency when figures are presented in such an aggregated manner.

 ANother idea i had, and it will mainly help the committee, is that there should be some forum where all sub committees could meet and discuss sharing their resourcces with one another.

All the sub committees do the same thing, in braod terms, they organise events. There are the same resources needed, i would imagine, to run for example: a freestyle event as there would a slalom event. eg Shelter, judging equipment

There should be more cross discpline interaction anyway, i feel.

Any more ideas, opinions?

I think it's a measure of general dissatisfaction that many things in the recommendations document are pretty much requests to do things that should surely be current practice.

That said, I think it's definitely time to approach the situation in a more level headed way than ICU bashing. I'm not trying to be rude but if people want to continue to bash, then they should either get their membership up to date and express a reasonable point in the right environment or accept that the organisation has nothing to offer them and leave the frustration behind.

It's easy to be cynical; perhaps naive to be hopeful, but surely this document and what is obviously a massive amount of time put into it is an opportunity to draw a line in the sand and state what you want your organisation to be?

Now, I'm off to find the phone number to check if my membership is up to date....

Tony

P.S. I would appreciate knowing if my use of semicolon is correct!

On the point of clarity on ICU expenditure, I have to say it is very unfair to expect them to publish who they pay and how much they pay them. It is none of our business to be honest.

 Looking through last years report there is plenty of breakdown on where a lot of the money is going. The financial report is similar to what you'd expect from any large public company.

 I think there are plenty of issues in regard to the services they provide to the average recreational member and efforts could be much better served trying to rectify that.

Hi Ken,

I don't want to get into an internet back and forth with you on this but I 100% disagree with you and here's why... And I'll try to be as concise as I can.

Firstly I would ask, if you haven't t done so already, that you study all the ICU financial statements that I have placed on my website. 

The level of detail that others and myself are looking for is comparable to the ICU financial reports in the past.  (see 1999) What changed?I have been told that for the price the ICU pays the ICU could have that level of detail if they wished.

Transparency and openness are what organization like the ICU should strive for. It has been proven to help in wide variety of manners. This theme is even mentioned in the ICU development strategy. 

The ICU Financial Statements come with a "Qualified Opinion" statement from the accountant. Which says that he cant verify all the income and expenditures were properly recorded. In some private sector company's a financial statement which has a qualified opinion statement attached to it wold not be acceptable year after year. Not having a Qualified statement might not be possible with the ICU, because of its structures. However detailed accounts might serve to negate and negatives a "Qualified" financial statement might bring with it. 

The Irish Sports Council (the ICU's main funding body) inquired about the Qualified  Financial Statements in 2002 and again a few years after wards(I cant find that letter). Here is the email from the ISC to ICU, and the ICU's responses. 

ISC - ICU emails/letters 2002 RE: Qualified Statements etc. (pdf)

I'm sure the ICU officers would facilitate any quires by the board and furnish them with any figures they want. But this begs the question, why do we bother furnishing the board with these accounts in the first place if its likely they would have to ask for more details when needed. The ICU is paying for these accounts,they might as well be the best, most detailed accounts they can get for the price. To name one advantage  of this, the ICU could use such information for future financial planning.

All the best,

Seanie

0863154419

admin@irishwhitewater.com

Just to clarify when I said that we have no right to know who or what is paid, I was referring to salaries. I stand by that we (members or not) do not have that right.

I'm speculating here but I'd imagine that the reason accounts are less detailed is because there has being a general trend towards providing less detailed accounts recently for all companies. There is still some breakdown in the accounts, but it doesn't breakdown as per committee. I imagine that this information is available, so I wait with interest to see if it is produced at the AGM now that it has been requested.

The qualified opinions don't bother me, and the letter you just posted only reassures me further.

What would concern me would be if these are the same accounts that are shown to the board. Normally there would exist a separate set of internal accounts. This is common practice in business. The accounts published & shown to shareholders/members should not be the same that management use. If the board of the ICU are content to accept these accounts as their only guide it would raise very serious questions over their running of the ICU.(That said I struggle to believe that to be true)

The main reason I'm posting is that I see this as a relatively small issue. I have some experience in Accounting and Auditing and nothing stinks to me. Yes it would be nice to have a bit more breakdown, but there are plenty of serious issues in regard to the services that the ICU should, but don't provide. If effort is going to be put into reforming the ICU than I think it would be much better focused on getting them to provide them in the future than getting them to account for every penny spent in the past.

Best of luck with your campaign and you have my support.

Ken

Just a couple of points that reading the above brings up:

1. Why is it impractical for a national organisation to issue receipts  for all money received or to request a receipt for every euro spent?

 2. I agree that its unrealistic to expect the ICU to publish individual salaries for all of their employees. At the same time though, it is important that the salaries of the elected officers are pubished in the same way that those of company directors are.

3.

 Is this really feasable? Surely the time and cost implications would be prohibitive? 

 4. The letter to the ISC also raises other questions about the administration of Irish sport in general. Is this a case of a temporary fix for the ICU only for any advancements to be nullified by a general malaise in the running of the ISC. If this is the case it raises the potentially bigger problem of going back in a couple of years and attempting to use the same solutions (which seem like reasonable and workable solutions) for the same problems only to be told that it didn't work then so why should it work now? 

5. How well/poorly run is the ICU in comparison to other nations/sports. This is where you have to look at other organisations catering for similar numbers of members. The BCU caters for 1 in every 1,200ish people in the UK, the ICU has one in every 1,300ish people involved in canoeing. This seems like a reasonable enough caomparison.

6. I would agree that not enough is being spent on advertising the sport and that we need to see more from the ICU.

 Thats just about all that I can come up with right now. I'm sure that more ideas will come to me as I drift off happily into the land of nod. Sorry if it seems like I'm having a go at anybody that's not my intention. I'm just trying to put my view across. Seanie has done a great job just to get all of this information into the open and I hope that at least some of his reccommendations are adapted at the AGM.

 Evan 

I think I didn’t make myself clear, or I skipped a step somewhere, but when I say I want more detail and break downs in the financial statements for things like salaries, events etc., the end result isn’t going to be geared towards general members consumption. However I do believe that the board and the ISC should be furnished with the details. As a direct result of this, the ISC can give anyone the accounts under the freedom of information act. I’m just skipping the middleman and saying that the ICU should publish the accounts.

All the best,

Seanie

 Tony that the usual kind of my glass is half full answere I get when I ICU bash.

Is it too much to hope that i could just pay my membership and expect the organisation recieving it to do a little something for it. Every member cannot run the thing that would be chaos.

Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

Fair enough Bren. I'm not saying I'm terribly excited about the organisation either as it stands but the reality is that an opinion is just an opinion. At the end of the day, people opt in or opt out.

The reality is though that organisations that don't provide what you want don't just wake up some morning and decide things are going to be different.

The reality is though that organisations that don't provide what you want don't just wake up some morning and decide things are going to be different.

This is true. I will and do support those who try to make it better.

I can never do the sitting on the fence thing well "shitty balance" "no patience".

 What side of it are you on ?

Its hard to tell from your posts and I don't mean that in a bad way.

Are you saying join up and vote or something else ?

Never test the depth of the water with both feet.

I'd have to say I am on the fence. I've never really felt that strong a need for the ICU as a recreational paddler. There's a lot about the way it runs that I don't like but I'm not under 21, I don't compete etc so in everyday paddling it's hard to see the point in getting too upset about it.

In saying that - who do we turn to when access issues hit our doors as I'm sure they probably will. There are of course other issues.

I guess I fall on the side of the fence of using the system to change the system, but still leaning on it with the glib outlook of what does it mean to me anyway?