I read during the week that there's a move afoot to tax referees on the income they earn from officiating at sporting fixtures. Now on the face of it there's nothing wrong with the fundamental thinking involved. If there are referees who are earning big bucks from the job, then there's no earthly reason why they shouldn't pay their fair share of tax accordingly. The important word in that sentence, however, is 'if'.
The issue arose first, apparently, in the context of Irish soccer: someone involved asked the question as to whether or not referees were being taxed and it began to snowball from there. It isn't clear yet whether or not the revenue commissioners are in fact taking the matter seriously. But if they are, they might well be advised to think again. There are, to begin with, only a handful of referees operating at what might be described as the top level here and even they don't get particularly handsomely paid for the trouble. For the rest, as anyone who is involved in junior soccer will happily confirm, it can be a grim slog indeed heading out on Saturday afternoons or Sunday mornings to pitches that are often no better than mud-baths, to officiate at games the entertainment value of which is frequently somewhat less than might be enjoyed sitting at home and watching a programme on television about, say, taxidermy (a fascinating subject, as you will be aware). I know. I've played in some of those games!
It takes a particular kind of dedication that, in fact, is in somewhat short supply right now. Indeed, if anything, the government should be trying to come up with new ways of encouraging people to take up the whistle. In soccer in Dublin, and elsewhere in the country, the chronic shortage of referees has led to the increasingly frequent cancellation of fixtures at every grade, but especially at schoolboy level. The Government, and the Minister for Sport in particular, are fond of telling us how good for you sport is and they're right. But the kind of organisation that s required to ensure that thousands of competitive games take place, across all codes and ages, every week, doesn't come about by some happy accident. Administrators, club secretaries, managers, coaches, fund-raising parents for the most part, these people become involved in the game in the first place out of a commitment to children, and a love of the sport.
Referees, it's true, come into a slightly different category they're being paid a few bob for their services. But all the rest of the work that goes into putting clubs and leagues together, and organising fixtures, and lining pitches, and hanging nets even if there's a gale howling and the rain is pouring down! would be for nought if the supply of referees were to begin to dry up. It's as simple as that: you need referees to enable the wheels of sporting activity to turn. As work goes, it isn't attractive, the pay isn't good and there s always the threat of physical violence! And besides you have to put in the time doing courses, and handling matches for buttons at schools level, before you'll get to the stage where there is a few pounds coming in. Go on, tell us do you envy a referee his (or her) lot?
So I kinda think that the sensible thing would be to lay off and leave well enough alone. Certainly, I cannot imagine that it would seem worthwhile to a referee to keep doing the job at the rates currently being paid in junior football, if a chunk was going to be taken out of that to cover tax. It's a bit like baby-sitting. Hundreds of teenagers all over Ireland make a decent chunk of spending money doing it. Strictly speaking, that should be taxed too. But would it make any sense to hunt the baby-sitters of Ireland down, in order to enforce that strict kind of regime? I don't think so.
There is in this also a question as to what kind of society we want Ireland to become. Traditionally, this country had been a looser type of place, not so hung up on enforcing the absolute letter of the law. I remember the drug squad in the era of Dinny Mullins, and they were far more concerned with counselling ordinary drug users who came to their attention than with charging them and banging them behind bars. This was the Irish way, and it had a lot going for it. In a lot of respects, over the past few years, we have been moving, inexorably, towards a less tolerant, more rigid kind of regime. I can see the arguments for it but I do not believe that it is necessarily an unreservedly good thing.
In a sense, the issue about referees is a good test in relation to this. Do we still have the ability to keep things like this in perspective? To worry about the money that referees are not paying in tax is to get all excited about what isn't even a hill of beans. And besides, they do the State some service.
Now, did anyone ever think of a offering referees a travel subsidy? Now there's an idea (which might just win us favourable treatment the next time hotpress Munchengladbach take to the pitch). Eh?