East Coast Sea Kayaking Club

The ICU AGM took place last Saturday, 29th May. It was a small and suprisingly efficient affair with fewer than about 30 delegates attending and the whole event concluded in a couple of hours. Considering that the ICU has several thousand members, it seemed like a remarkably poor turnout. Almost all of the delegates represented clubs with virtually no individual members present, but perhaps that's not suprising given that individuals (not clubs) must form blocs of 10 in order to exercise voting rights!

Two new members were elected to the executive committee, Karl Dunne, who'd been serving anyway since last May, and Noel Tallon. It was interesting to note, during ratification of the ICU technical committees, that whilst almost every other canoeing and kayaking discipline is represented by a technical committee, sea kayaking is not! The good news is that it is a recognised omission and a well orchestrated approach to add sea kayaking representation seems likely to be received favourably.

A vote was taken to change the official name of the organisation from Irish Canoe Union to Canoeing Ireland. Why? It seems that most other national sports governing bodies include the word Ireland in their title, so this brings the ICU into line with the rest.

The final thing of note is that there was a robust debate about membership subscriptions for individual members, with a proposal from the executive to raise subs. for individual members by €5 voted down by the meeting! Last year the subscription for senior club members (adults joining through affiliated clubs) was doubled to €20, matching those for individual members. For a bunch of reasons the ICU wishes to promote club membership over individual membership, yet last year's change had the reverse effect with some clubs opting to no longer collect subscriptions for the ICU and many joining the ICU directly. After some discussion with a number of more extreme proposals on the table, it was eventually voted that subscriptions for individual members would increase to €30, with senior club membership remaining at €20 and the others unchanged, from January 2011.