Permanent Leisure Centre closure rumours refuted

The Board of Management of Bailieborough Swimming and Leisure Centre is actively seeking streams of funding to put the popular facility on a sounder footing for the future.

Board chairman Paul McFadden refuted any suggestions that the Leisure Centre was going to close permanently.

He dismissed suggestions that either himself or any of the Board members had stepped down. “We are all actively striving to put the facility on a sound footing into the future”.

He reaffirmed that the Board are actively seeking meetings with Oireachtas representatives, including Minister Heather Humphreys.

He pointed out that the facility at Bailieborough Swimming and Leisure Centre is a community operated facility, run on a ‘not for profit’ basis, and is not owned by the County Council.

“We have been trying to open the pool and when we got the go ahead, we did endeavour to commence proceedings to get it up and going. But when we brought the projected numbers we would be allowed into the facility under the social distancing guidelines to our accountants, they said we would be making a loss for the next six months, if not more,” explained Mr McFadden. “The feedback we were getting from other pools around the region was that they were getting very few in every day. We can only get 20 into the pool and 10 into the gym and a lot of them would be members.

“We have been basically lobbying our local representatives and we are trying to arrange a meeting with a Minister. They have been directing us towards the grants and we have applied for all of them, but given the size of the grants, they are not going to keep the place open for too long.”

He explained that given the accountants’ advice they decided to instead take a long term view.

“The Cavan Swim Club would be one of our biggest customers and they are limited as to how many they can bring in – they have 100 members. If we did open up now, we would have the members coming back and we would not be generating any immediate income from that”.

Insurance costs

The insurance costs have increased by 250% since 2019 as their historic insurer pulled out of the Irish market.

“It was not until May of this year that we found another insurer to take it on – there was a good bit of work in that due to the restrictions and the fact that we were all housebound.”

When asked what was the insurance cost now, Paul McFadden said, “I think we are up to about €18,000 now. We have a bit of a deal on it – we are not paying the full amount now, it is only building insurance but that is still substantial. When we open again, that is going to increase the cost again.”

Paul McFadden and the other board members stress they are working to secure the long term health of the centre.

“We need to exhaust the avenues we are going down at the moment – via the public representatives and the council and see where we go from there.

“We are acutely aware it is a valuable asset for the community and we are doing our best to try and keep it that way – we just felt that the figures didn’t add up at the moment to open it.

“We are trying to get to a situation, whereby when we do open, it is going to stay open.”