Office of Student Life aware that it was in breach of CLC policy regarding coaches’ expenses

The Manager of the Office of Student Life has revealed that the office was aware of the breach in policy that occurred during last year’s club allocations.

Last year, The College View attained figures which proved that the Club Life Committee (CLC) provided funding for three coaches of the Sigerson and Fresher ‘A’ sides.

However, CLC Policy states: “Only 2 coaches per team will be allocated.”

In an interview with The College View, Una Redmond said: “We knew, I’d suppose, that we were paying three coaches when we did it. We weren’t sticking as strictly to our policy as we should have been but that was in no way the fault of the GAA club or any other club that was doing that. We allocated them at the beginning and we committed to three coaches and I’d suppose our policy wasn’t as clear to us when we were doing that allocation as it is now.”

Contradictorily, in the wake of Bank of Ireland’s removal of all sponsorship of DCU’s Hurling Club, CLC policy was applied strictly to this year’s funding allocations.

“We don’t really have a huge amount of scope to say ‘oh the Hurling or the Sub-Aqua or the Drama Society this year have less sponsorship than last year, we’ll give them a little bit more money’.

“Our policies are fairly rigid; we don’t have scope to do that. We really don’t. And particularly in clubs, you know, if you have a team you get a coach, you get the same amount per head as every other team across the board. If you get a bus to Galway, you’ll get the same amount as the bus to Galway if you’re the hurling, the football, camogie, soccer, rugby. We’ve a policy and it’s very strictly adhered to. Because otherwise it would be so difficult.”

However, despite an overall reduction in CLC’s budget, the Hurling Club have been allocated a larger amount this year than last year. €21,600 will go to the club but the increase is not linked to the retraction of Bank of Ireland’s sponsorship: “We haven’t taken into account in hurling’s case the fact that they’ve lost their sponsorship.”

Meanwhile, the payment system for coaches of DCU’s clubs has been revamped. Every coach will now become a staff member of the Office of Student Life, instead of being paid through the club itself.

Furthermore, every coach now has to have a qualification in order to be paid for training their respective teams. Students who are qualified will also be paid an equal amount to non-student trainers.

Redmond said: “We are saying now categorically two coaches, fully qualified. They have to have a qualification. All coaches now, the GAA or any of the clubs. Mostly that the coaches are qualified but to make sure we have quality standard of coaching – because that’s our biggest single expenditure to make sure that the coaches are fully qualified.”

Eoin Sheahan

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