Tag Archives: Dawn Livingstone

The best-value CEO

Posted on Friday 11 July 2014 | 1 comment

Mary Lou McDonald [SF, Dublin Central] asked Jimmy Deenihan [FG, Kerry North/West Limerick], before his departure from the waterways (and other stuff) department,

… if he will provide in tabular form a list of the annual salaries of the chief executive officers of all non-commercial State sponsored bodies under his remit.

Which he did; you can see it here.

I thought it might be interesting to see how the salaries of the CEOs relate to the numbers of staff and the budgets they control. It’s not easy to compare them. The salary figures are presumably current; the various bodies offer, on their websites, accounts for years ending anywhere from 31 December 2011 to [well done, the National Concert Hall] 31 December 2013. In some cases I could find no proper accounts, but at least the Crawford Art Gallery gave a figure for its income, which is more than the Chester Beatty Library did [as far as I could see].

There were several other minor difficulties, but the big problem is that some bodies distribute grants to others, so their business is processing money: as a result, their income (usually from, or mostly from, the state) is higher than it would be for non-grant-distributing bodies. I have made no attempt to allow for that.

To make comparisons easier, I divided the number of staff in each body by the CEO’s salary (converted to euro where necessary) and multiplied the result by 1000 to remove leading zeroes. That tells you how many employees you get managed for each euro of CEO salary. Waterways Ireland is by far the biggest organisation, but has the second-lowest CEO salary.

Similarly, I divided the organisation’s income by the CEO’s salary to provide a crude measure of how much activity you get for each euro of CEO salary. Bodies dispensing grants look better than they otherwise might using this measure.

This is then a very crude comparison, with many caveats, but I think that Dawn Livingstone of Waterways Ireland is the best-value CEO of those running bodies under the aegis of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht.

 

Organisation Staff Budget (m) CEO salary Staff X 1000/salary Budget/salary
Arts Council 48[1] €63.9[2] €85,750 0.56 745.19
Chester Beatty Library 37[3] ?[4] €90,591 0.41 ?
Crawford Art Gallery 15 €1.1[5] €72,124 0.21 15.25
Foras na Gaeilge 64[6] €21.5[7] €113,429 0.56 189.55
Heritage Council 18[8] €7.8[9] €113,123 0.16 68.95
Irish Film Board 15[10] €20.2[11] €97,981 0.15 206.16
Irish Museum of Modern Art 83[12] €8.3[13] €85,720 0.97 96.83
National Concert Hall 103[14] €4.6[15] €101,056 1.02 45.52
National Gallery of Ireland 117[16] €9.5[17] €93,297 1.25 101.83
National Library of Ireland 93[18] €9.5[19] €81,080 1.15 117.17
National Museum of Ireland 176[20] €17.6[21] €96,148 1.83 183.05
Údarás na Gaeltachta 86[22] €40.2[23] €126,200 0.68 318.54
Ulster-Scots Agency 20[24] €3.4[25] €61,997[26] 0.32 54.81
Waterways Ireland 328[27] €41.0[28] €77,071[29] 4.26 531.98

I’m sorry the table spreads so far to the right; I can’t work out how to narrow the column widths.

 

 

[1] 41 full time and 7 part time WTEs, according to note 2c to accounts in Arts Council Annual Report 2012

[2] Total income y/e 31 December 2012 from Arts Council Annual Report 2012. €56.6m was dispensed to other bodies in grants

[3] Excluding volunteers and vacant posts shown in the Staff List in Report of the Trustees Chester Beatty Library 2012

[4] The annual report for 2012 available here http://www.cbl.ie/About-Us/The-Chester-Beatty-Library/Reports.aspx does not include accounts. There is a one-page balance sheet, without the associated notes, from which I am unable to form any idea of the cost of the institution

[5] I am unable to find any accounts on the Crawford Art Gallery’s website http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/aboutus1.html. Its Annual report 2011, the most recent available, says “The Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism pay allocation to the Gallery for 2011 was €475,000, while the non-pay allocation was €600,000. The capital allocation for 2011 was €275,000.” I have used the (rounded) sum of the first two figures

[6] Staff Costs and Board Remuneration in Foras na Gaeilge section of The North/South Language Body Annual Report and Accounts for 2011

[7] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from Foras na Gaeilge section of The North/South Language Body Annual Report and Accounts for 2011

[8] Heritage Council website www.heritagecouncil.ie

[9] Total income y/e 31 December 2013 from Heritage Council Annual Report for 2012

[10] Note 6 to accounts in Annual Report 2011

[11] Sum of total income figures from Capital Income and Expenditure Account and Administration Income and Expenditure Account y/e 31 December 2011 in Annual Report 2011

[12] Note 9 to accounts in Irish Museum of Modern Art Annual Report 2011

[13] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from Irish Museum of Modern Art Annual Report 2011

[14] Note 2 to accounts in National Concert Hall Annual Report 2013

[15] Gross income y/e 31 December 2013 from National Concert Hall Annual Report 2013

[16] Note 7 to accounts in National Gallery of Ireland Annual Report 2012

[17] Total income y/e 31 December 2012 from National Gallery of Ireland Annual Report 2012

[18] Rounded. From Human resource management and development in National Library of Ireland Annual Report 2011

[19] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from National Library of Ireland Annual Report 2011

[20] Note 13 to accounts in The National Museum of Ireland Financial Statements for 2011

[21] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from The National Museum of Ireland Financial Statements for 2011

[22] Údarás na Gaeltachta Annual Report and Accounts 2012

[23] Total income y/e 31 December 2012 from Údarás na Gaeltachta Annual Report and Accounts 2012

[24] Staff Costs and Board Members in Tha Boord O Ulster-Scotch section of The North/South Language Body Annual Report and Accounts for 2011

[25] Total income y/e 31 December 2011 from Tha Boord O Ulster-Scotch section of The North/South Language Body Annual Report and Accounts for 2011

[26] £49,244

[27] Excluding student placements and temporary and agency staff (total 19). Note 4 to accounts in Waterways Ireland Annual Report and Accounts 2012

[28] Total income y/e 31 December 2013 from Waterways Ireland Annual Report and Accounts 2012

 

 

 

 

1 Comment

Posted in Built heritage, Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Foreign parts, Ireland, Operations, People, Politics, Sources, Waterways management

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Shannon traffic figures to September 2013

Posted on Friday 15 November 2013 | 4 comments

The current (November 2013) issue of the British magazine Waterways World (available online only to subscribers) has an interview with Dawn Livingstone, new CEO of Waterways Ireland. There was a question about visitor numbers:

How are boating visitor numbers holding up in the recession?

The type of boating is changing — more sports boats for example, and numbers, after an initial decline, have held steady in the cruiser hire and private boat fleets. But more customers are investing in active recreation — canoeing, sailing, rowing, and these clubs and holiday types are growing rapidly.

My sense of the types of boating is the same, but I do not know of any source of reliable data. I think it would be useful if Waterways Ireland were (somehow) to collect and then to publish data on these activities and their economic costs and benefits.

But I was amused by the statement that …

[…] numbers, after an initial decline, have held steady in the cruiser hire and private boat fleets.

I’m not sure what useful data there are for the Lower Bann, Shannon–Erne Waterway, Grand, Royal and Barrow, though perhaps enhanced enforcement of the regulations will improve the data for the last three of those waterways. For the Shannon and Erne, the numbers in the fleets are, I presume, derived from the numbers of registered vessels, but there is no annual re-registration and I am not clear how many boats that are removed from the navigation are removed from the registers.

The other, indirect, measure, which applies only to the Shannon, is of passages through locks and moveable bridges. And, for hire boats, the “initial decline” has been 60% since 2003. If the numbers are now holding steady, it is at a very much lower level than ten years ago.

I was able to report in August that the better weather in July seemed to have led to an increase in the number of passages by private boats [the usual caveats apply]. Furthermore, for the first time that I knew of, the number of passages by private boats in the first seven months of the year exceeded the number of passages by hire boats in the same period.

I now have the figures for two more months, August and September, kindly supplied by Waterways Ireland, who are not to blame for my delay in getting the information up here.

All boats JanSept nos_resize

Look! An increase!

All boats JanSept percent_resize

Total passages are now almost back up to 60% of the levels of ten years ago

Hire boats JanSept percent_resize

Hire boat numbers are down by only a tiny amount

Private boats JanSept percent_resize

Private boat numbers are up

Private -v- hire JanSept nos_resize

Hire boat numbers are slightly above private boat numbers

Private boat numbers are ahead of hire in the three main summer holiday months of June, July and August and, although the numbers are tiny, in the winter months as well; hirers are ahead in spring and autumn.

 

4 Comments

Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Ireland, Irish inland waterways vessels, Operations, People, Shannon, Sources, Tourism, Uncategorized, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management, Weather

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

News from the NSMC

Posted on Monday 24 June 2013 | 1 comment

The communiqué from the North South Ministerial Council inland waterways meeting held on 19 June 2013 is here. This is my selection of the interesting bits.

The NSMC got reports on WI’s additional moorings (368m during some unspecified period), sponsorship programme, maintenance (“with 99.8% of waterways remaining open during the month of April”), publications (food guide and What’s On 2013) and website.

The WI business plan for 2012 was approved, which seems a bit pointless in the middle of 2013. A budget of €31.15m (£27.10m) was approved for an unspecified year. Then there’s this oddity:

5. They also noted progress on the development of the 2013 Business Plan and budget. Following approval by Sponsor Departments and Finance Ministers the plan will be brought forward for approval at a future NSMC meeting.

This is the middle of 2013. The next NSMC inland waterways meeting will be held in September 2013. What is the point of approving the budget and business plan for 2013 three quarters of the way through the year?

And another point: why is it taking so long? My guess is that, if things were running smoothly, and allocations were easy, the work would have been finished by now, so I deduce that WI’s budget is under pressure, with consequences for its future activity and thus its business plan.

The NSMC “noted” WI’s annual report and draft accounts for 2012; they’re not on its website, so presumably someone else has to note them as well before they can be published.

The unfortunate Bastables seeking treasure to pay for the Clones Sheugh had their second meeting in May 2013 (their first was in September 2012). In the absence of any GB, and with half-sovereigns rather scarce, the Bastables have adopted the “Lo! the poor Indian” strategy:

[…] sponsor departments have agreed to examine the potential social benefits and leveraged funding opportunities in that context.

The NSMC decided that Waterways Ireland won’t have a Board but will think about governance again some time. And it appointed Dawn Livingstone as WI CEO.

1 Comment

Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Forgotten navigations, Industrial heritage, Ireland, Irish waterways general, Non-waterway, Operations, People, Politics, Restoration and rebuilding, Sources, Tourism, Ulster Canal, Water sports activities, waterways, Waterways management

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dawn Livingstone …

Posted on Monday 24 June 2013 | 2 comments

… is to be the new CEO of Waterways Ireland:

Ministers appointed Dawn Livingstone to the post of Chief Executive of Waterways Ireland for a seven year contract, with effect from 29 July 2013 or the earliest possible date thereafter.

It will be interesting to have a non-engineer running the shop.

 

 

2 Comments

Posted in Economic activities, Engineering and construction, Extant waterways, Foreign parts, Ireland, Irish waterways general, Operations, People, Politics, waterways, Waterways management

Tagged , , , , , , ,