Notice of EGM 2025
Dear Irish Sailing Member,
Irish Sailing will hold an EGM at 1900 hrs. on Thursday 9th October 2025, in person, at The Killeshin Hotel, Dublin Road, Portlaoise, Co. Laois R32TYWZ.
Information on motions to authorise changes to member subscription & management for discussion, debate and approval are as follows:
Summary
Irish Sailing (IS), with the help of a Working Group that included representatives of large, medium and small clubs, has reviewed its members subscription policy, now in place for 14 years, along with its systems and processes. The focus of the review was on benefitting Irish Sailing’s members and its affiliated clubs and ensuring the ability of the organisation to protect and expand its existing services. This review recognised upcoming changes in Government support allocations to sporting organisations and the evolution of club management and member expectations.
IS has researched other sports National Governing Bodies (NGBs) in Ireland and other World Sailing Member National Authorities (MNAs) to benchmark subscription rates, software and systems and to ascertain best and standard practice. As part of the process, IS representatives spoke directly with many clubs and stakeholders to understands the challenges presenting themselves in addressing these issues and to learn the club’s perspectives on potential proposals.
IS, the NGB created by Irish clubs for the benefit of the clubs, their members and the sport, wishes to invest in its infrastructure to improve the future governance and growth of our sailing. This will require raising membership income to cover costs in the awareness of the future reduction of Dormant Account Funding (DAF) to Irish sports organisations, which will reduce Government support for IS. IS also needs to invest in the continued improvement of services and to comply with Sport Ireland requirements for NGB’s to fund their own activities to a significant extent as a condition for financial supports for both IS operations and the provision of grants and support to affiliated clubs.
Irish Sailing seeks member approval to do so.
Principles of the Change
- Financial
- Pricing to be simplified – current model is complicated to administer for Clubs and IS.
- Club affiliation income has not changed for 14 years and an increase (20% increase in comparison with the 24.8% CPI) is appropriate and required.
- Club fees to be made fairer by all clubs paying the same percentage of their membership subscriptions (excluding all other income) as an affiliation fee.
- IS fees are paid by clubs in two ways, a club subscription fee and a member subscription fee, this proposal aims to make both fairer by charging the same rates.
- An interim discount is proposed for previously reduced member fees – to graduate levelling up
- An interim cap on Club fees is proposed – to graduate impact of equalisation.
- Duplicate membership fees to be eliminated upon implementation of the MMS.
- Resulting increase in total IS income will be c. 7%, to be spent, carefully on increasing the quality of member services and covering reduction of DAF funding.
- Member Management
- A modern, ‘fit for purpose’, Member Management System (MMS), holding relevant member data – basic details, member number, club, boat(s), certificates, training levels, safeguarding & garda vetting. The information may be viewed by the affiliated club and IS and controlled by the member in a GDPR compliant way.
- The MMS will be provided to, and integrated with, clubs for launch in 2027.
- Change of Racing Rules of Sailing (RRS) Prescriptions, upon MMS launch in 2027, so that ALL crew in any race (under RRS), will be members of Irish Sailing or another MNA – sharing cost with more sailors and encouraging participation – with crew, universities, schools, cruising.
- Adaptation of policy so that all trainees in our 105 Training Centres and 11 training schemes will be members of IS, with low-cost entry points.
- Constitutional
- Constitution to be corrected in 2026 so that all members of Category 1 clubs will be members of Irish Sailing (Affiliate Personal Members) – how we operate in practice.
- Other
- Learning Management System (Checklick) and other data sources (Garda Vetting, Safeguarding and IS Database) to be integrated to give members and clubs visibility of certificates and qualifications for good governance and administration.
- Members to be better informed on IS value – through improved communications.
- Personal & Accident Insurance, arranged through a IS group policy, aimed at reducing risk for all sailors and providing member value, to be put forward to members for discussion.
Motions for Member Approval
Irish Sailing proposes motions for changes to Member Subscription and Management in the following four elements:
- Changes to the Irish Sailing Constitution
- Changes to Member Subscription Rates & Policies
- Implementation of Membership Management System for all Irish Sailing members, which will be GDPR compliant, integrated with Clubs through 2026 and launched in 2027.
- Changes to the Irish Sailing RRS Prescriptions – adopting new Rule 75.1 in 2027.
Proceedings and Additional Information
Please see links below to download the relevant documentation:
The motions will be discussed at the EGM and as set out by our constitution, put to a vote to our members.
Please note that a copy of our current constitution, AGM Minutes and Annual Report can be found in our governance library at www.sailing.ie.
We are your National Governing Body, created by clubs for the benefit of clubs and our sport. Please do get in touch with me, directly, if you have any questions or queries in advance.
We look forward to seeing as many of you in Portlaoise as possible.
On behalf of the Irish Sailing Board; Sue Concannon (President), David Cullen (Secretary), Deirdre Tingle (Treasurer), Niall O’Neill, Bill O’Hara, Nancy Rooney, Frank Nowlan, Tessa Kingston, David Love, Nigel Moss and Valda Boardman