A club in O'Donoghue's constituency of Kerry South enjoying this sort of good fortune via the capital grants system is nothing new. Between 2005 and 2006, the residents of Glenbeigh received 295,000 towards the town's sport hall. With a permanent population of just over 300, they essentially snagged the equivalent of almost a grand per person. Nobody is doubting the denizens of St Mary's and Glenbeigh do good work at the coalface of Irish sport. We are merely pointing out that when castigating the GAA about its apparent lack of gratitude for public money received, O'Donoghue isn't exactly speaking from a position of moral strength.

Every club in the country is supposed to have an equal chance of accessing national lottery funds and improving their facilities through the sports capital grants. However, since O'Donoghue took over the sports portfolio in the summer of 2002, the voters in Kerry South have received an outsized share of the pie every single year.

Even in a nation where pork barrel politics are the norm, the abuse of the system has been startling.

In 2006, 14 different sporting concerns in O'Donoghue's constituency managed to snag just over 1.5m between them. This is more than was given to the entire counties of Monaghan, Louth, Offaly, Roscommon and Sligo. It was double the amount granted to counties Carlow, Laois, Westmeath and Leitrim, and near enough treble what poor Longford got. The worst part is that this sort of imbalance was nothing new. In 2005, the people of Kerry South outdrew 18 of the other 25 counties. A year earlier, the half of the county charged with returning him to Dail Eireann in a few weeks time outscored 17 counties. Anybody seeing a pattern here?

The minister's hectoring of Croke Park about the need to understand "the spirit of fairness and generosity" can hardly be taken seriously when his own bailiwick benefits to such a ridiculous extent from his department's largesse. With a failure rate of nearly 50 per cent among applicants for these grants annually, it's remarkable the people of Kerry South outperform their competitors in other counties on such a consistent basis each year.

Even allowing for their reputation as "cute hoors", this is ridiculous.

Are they that much better at filling in the forms and assuring the inquiring civil servants of their bona fides?

Maybe so. How else do we explain that over the past two years O'Donoghue's constituency of nearly 70,000 people received almost the same amount in grants as Meath, a county with a population of twice that many?

A week before he got into such an unseemly row with the GAA about the amount of public money invested in Croke Park, O'Donoghue proved he's a renaissance man whose interests go beyond sport.

He awarded 20 per cent of all funding for cultural festivals this summer to events in, you guessed it, Kerry South.

Of the 1.4m doled out, this incredibly lucky constituency received 280,000.

That sum surpassed how much Dublin got by almost 100,000. We just hope those benefitting from those stipends can do as good a job showing where the cash was spent as the GAA.

Regardless of whether the grants it received were from lottery or exchequer funds, O'Donoghue need only look out the windows of Leinster House to see where the money went on Jones' Road. Pity he can't say the same about others. Rather than picking fights with an association that can account for every cent it has received towards reconstructing its headquarters, the minister might be better served assuring taxpayers that Shamrock Rovers properly used the 2m or so it received towards the completion of the Tallaght Stadium.

In 2001, Slonepark Company Ltd.

For Shamrock Rovers were awarded �500,000 from the sports capital grants. A year later, they did even better with an allocation of 1.3m. If that money was ever drawn down, can the department assure us it was invested in bricks and mortar? If so, how come the facility was never finished? Can they guarantee that none of the cash was squandered on wages rather than infrastructure? The expenditure of 2m in public money seems a far more worthy subject for O'Donoghue's comment than Thomas Davis' interest in playing there.

After he's done with Rovers, the TD for blessed Kerry South might clarify whether Bohemians have to pay back the nearly 750,000 that club received to improve Dalymount Park since 1999.

That money was given to improve a sportsground and, by extension, contribute to the community. Now it's being turned into housing, surely the beneficiaries owe something to the State? Similarly with Shelbourne's 600,000 in grants when Tolka Park goes the way of the apartment blocks.

When it comes to the public funding of sport, there are plenty of issues needing to be addressed by the minister. Croke Park just isn't one of them.