Talk:Frank Murphy (sports administrator)

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This shows beyond any doubt the depth of problems faced in Cork by the genuine Cork Supporter and not just the players in dispute at the moment. Even some of Frank Murphy's best supporters will be surprised at some of this information and power this man retains in the Cork GAA community.

Again I re-iterate this is all fact based Some research in the last week into the activities of the CCB, or lack thereof. 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 a further €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 it was 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 Murphy.

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 (Fine)State agency FÁS is the current President elect of the GAA and Frank's PlaceMan in Croke Park for the dispute with 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 Tim league, 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 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 too few with too much unchecked control. 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.

Pass this info on to your fellow GAA supporters and hopefully we can bring about some reform to this once Proud County.

A chairde go leir