Your Country Your Call: An Smaoineamh Mór Ltd’s Financial Statement

Throughout the Your Country, Your Call competition we were promised information would be made available later. When we asked who the donors were, were were told it would be released in a few weeks. When we asked for details of the competition’s finances, we were told that wouldn’t be released until after the results were announced. This, as anyone who has travelled through the looking glass with Alice knows, is known as Jam Tomorrow.

Nonetheless, there was one date that couldn’t be mentioned and then ignored to avoid questions. That was the mandatory filing of the accounts of the company which ran the Your Country Your Call competition, An Smaoineamh Mór Ltd (henceforth ASM). Every company has to file some statements every year with the Company Registration Office. These are public documents. I’ve uploaded one to Scribd, a document storing site, which you can see below. This one details the financial status of An Smaoineamh Mór as of December 2010 and covers its entire active existence during the Your Country, Your Call competition.

Headlines first, as I’ve been accused of burying interesting info in too many words.

1. ASM has loads of money in an account in AIB, right now. Like, loads. €1,188,203 to be exact.
2. Despite being regularly told that the entire YCYC team were donating their time and effort pro-bono, the document shows that there was actually one person employed by the company on a pay package of €80,934. It doesn’t say who that person was or what job they did.
3. Quite reasonably, the Directors’ statement says “The board of directors believes the company has sufficient funds to continue in existence for the foreseeable future, and in particular to bring the winning projects to the implementation phase no later than September 2011”.

More later.

YCYC/An Smaoineamh Mor Annual Report