A Westmeath based community group has hit out at a government funding body saying that its demands are “crucifying”, “ridiculous”, and “bureaucracy gone mad”.
Committee members at Locke’s Distillery, Kilbeggan, who last year were granted €80,000 by Pobal, say that the level of paperwork required to get the money is unsustainable. The group was founded over 20 years ago to restore the distillery in Kilbeggan and set up the museum but since Pobal took over from FÁS life has become a nightmare of paperwork.
Manager Ursula Corcoran cannot over-emphasise how important Pobal funding is to them, but admits that they have to pay someone to do the paperwork necessary. A staff member employed by the museum whose role was solely in finance and payroll, now spends 70 per cent of her time dealing with Pobal - related business.
“All the work has to be done to a deadline, which means other work has to be shelved to meet quarterly deadlines.” In response, Pobal says that administration “should only require a group to spend a few hours a week, and we are very concerned if it is taking longer”.
They add that: “Pobal has offered to meet the committee of Locke’s Distillery which receives the funding as Kilbeggan Preservation and Development Association, “to help explain the programme’s reporting requirements and to provide training and support to the manager and other staff. That offer stands and we would hope to meet the group sooner rather than later.”
Locke’s Distillery committee members had initiated contact by email with Pobal back in June 2008, and to date hasnot succeeded in arranging a meeting with Pobal.
Ursula says that she has attended all of Pobal’s management courses and their administrator has attended the administrative courses and is “fully up to speed” with computerised accounts and other skills.
According to a committee member the problem is not with their skills but the sheer volume of work that has to be done, requiring nonsensical duplication “done to their specifications which seem to be different to what’s required by company law”.
“It’s wasting time for people who don’t have full time staff. Someone doing this voluntarily, especially at starting level – how the hell are they supposed to cope?”
“It isn’t fair, it’s absolutely killing initiative at local level”.
Despite sending in quarterly returns, the group is subject to what Pobal calls a “verification audit” every two years. This year they’ve been asked to set aside three days for the event which took two and a half days in 2007 and was “microscopic” according to Ursula.
The purpose of the verification audit is to check the paperwork behind the quarterly returns.
As joint treasurer on the committee and credit controller with the family business Gannon Concrete, Patricia is bemused by the demands of Pobal. “What size of enterprise takes a three day audit – the second in three years? What level of turnover is required for that?”
Dan Scally agrees. “It’s bureaucracy gone mad. There should be a simpler more direct way of doing it.”
“We don’t have a problem with being audited and asked to produce documents, but we do have a problem with the way it’s done and the level of detail required,” says Patricia.
“They’re asking us to double and treble job. One of the things they asked us to do was to go back and start handwriting a cheques ledger. We have no idea for what. There’s a paper trail on the computer for everything. They wanted every cheque, and not only that I sign the cheque, but that I sign the cheques ledger to say I’ve signed the cheque.”
Pobal say they “do not have a policy of requiring hand-written ledgers – rather the contrary. And again, we would be only too happy to meet the group to clarify this sort of confusion.”
However, one of the recommendations from the group’s last verification audits clearly specifies the introduction of such a ledger.
Ursula says the feedback she gets from other community groups across the country is the same – it’s getting harder and harder to meet the criteria.
