Cork County Board: Who do you belong to?

I'd be eager to know if anyone can add anything to this bit of research, done by a friend of a friend. slightly off the players strike topic, yet relevant in terms of highlighting the working of Cork GAA.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok folks ... been doing a small bit of research in the last week into the activities of the CCB, or lack thereof. Got some info from the Companies Registration Office and it turns out that there is a company known as the Cork Athletic Grounds Company Limited which was incorporated in 1903 and which seems to have been running the affairs of Cork GAA for over 100 years.

Now it would cost me almost €200 to get all the info ever submitted to the CRO by this crowd, so I made do with the "accounts" for 2006. Having said that, it seems that this company submitted its "accounts" only intermittently over the years, and it has been late submitting its accounts for 2007. I showed this stuff to an accountant, who said that while there is nothing illegal on the face of it, the 2006 accounts represent "horrendous corporate governance", the likes of which he had never seen before, and something that the stakeholders in the SME company for which he works would not tolerate. No assets were listed on the balance sheet, other than 900 odd shares worth 2 euros each, 800 of which are owned by the cork county board. Therefore, in 2006 the Cork County Board claimed to be worth 1,800 bones. A likely story.

The remaining shareholders (about 40) were named with addresses in the inner city like the North Mall, North Main St, Princess St and so on. I do not recognise one of these names, and they certainly don't live in those addresses, and my accountant friend thought twas weird; I suspect many of these people are long dead. My accountant friend considered the whole thing a shelf company at this stage. The company's auditors are Gordon Lane & Co. on Academy St., who do not seem to be doing a very thorough job of things. Three directors were listed: Frank Murphy, Pierce Murphy and the late Con Muphy. [Pricks all].

That's not the end of the story. Without dissolving the Cork Athletic Grounds Co., it seems that a new company has been formed in the past 12 months called the Cork County GAA Board SES Company Limited. An SES company is a FÁS creation from the mid 1980s, and stands for Social Employment Scheme. It was heavily criticised back in the day and seems to have been fallen out of favour years ago to be replaced with CE schemes, but not so for our intrepid county board.

In an entirely unrelated aside, no coincidence whatsoever, the ranking officer of that rotten State agency FÁS is the current President elect of the GAA and Frank's PlaceMan in Croke Park for the Latest War on Our Hurlers, Christy Cooney. This Cork County GAA Board SES Company Limited lists 2 directors and a secretary, namely, Frank Murphy, Pierce Murphy and a Declan Walsh from Timoleague, and while it contains 100,000 shares, only 100 have been issued, 50 to Frank and 50 to Pierce (none to Declan).

My accountant tells me that this means Pierce and Frank effectively own the Cork County Board. Now whether that's on trust or not, I think that is fucking shocking. More importantly, because less than 10% of the shares are controlled by any one director, this company is exempt from audit under the Companies Acts. This means that they can spin any old yarn at the county convention on how much the players' spa treatment and facials or whatever cost ordinary Gaels of "dis great association" etc. It also means that, just as we all suspected down the years, that Frank indeed does pay himself and that nobody can scrutinize the accounts.

A few final points.

• First, all this information is available from the CRO and is such is in the public domain, so no need for the mods to take it down.
• Second, my accountant tells me that the GAA has centralised its own auditing procedure and does a good job of it; therefore there is little suspicion that fraud is being perpetrated, although personally I think the CCB is controlled by crooks.
• Third, the only way to take action on this is to inform the revenue, but unfortunately the revenue would not regard this as high priority. Besides, a high ranking member of the CCB is a high ranking member of the revenue, IIRC, so we would get short shrift.

Still though, tis a start and it would be good to let the fuckers know that we're breathing down their necks.......
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update as of 09/03/2009:
There has been a few comments on the legitimacy of this post on the LaoisTalk forum of late so I just wanted to point out that I did not state this as first hand knowledge - that's clarified at the top.
In saying that I did post the information I was given and without paying the €200 for the full information I can point people to here or here. Both sites back up the basics of the piece.
For further information I suggest calling the Cork County Board - and good luck with that ;-)