€60,000 to develop changing rooms

Clare Camogie Board met with members of Clare County Council this week, where it emerged that it would cost up to €60,000 to enter into a 35-year lease/purchase arrangement with the council to develop changing facilities at their pitch in Doora.

Chair of Clare Camogie Board, Orla Considine, outlined how the meeting went and indicated it would put serious financial pressure on the board.
“Basically, the council invited us to a meeting this week and we met with them. They indicated that they are putting an offer of a lease/purchase on the site, which would cover a 35-year period. That is what we understand. We would have to put up a substantially large amount of money, in the region of €60,000, on the grounds that we would get planning. The lease would not be signed unless the planning process is gone through also. We made them aware that we would have to get grants to be able to build on it and that we would have to own it, if not we would not get grants for it,” Ms Considine explained.
She added that the council were co-operative and told them they would assist with reports but she said that the camogie board would ultimately “bear more of the brunt of it”. 
“I suppose the issue for us is the planning and having to provide reports, we have never done that before so that is a bit daunting for us. Hopefully, the help and support of the council will be there and we will have pre-planning meetings that might get us over things we wouldn’t be familiar with.”
Ms Considine said the board has a small amount of set funding that had been gathered over the 20 years since the project was first mooted but said it is “nowhere near €60,000”. 
“We will have to put a fundraising initiative in place and it will take a huge amount of fundraising to raise the money that’s needed. We would hope that it might be negotiable, there is still a lot of work to do,” she concluded.