For the City Council Sports Policy to commit to include single stand alone swimming pools as an important part of its strategic policy towards the

The follow is a copy of the Managers Report 13/11/09:
The proposal to close the 3 pools emanate from a number of circumstances.
a) All three pools are over 30 years old, have reached the end of their design life and are effectively obsolete.
b) The adopted City Council Sports Policy is to provide integrated regional sports and leisure centres with a range of facilities including, pool, gym, steamroom/sauna, aerobics studios, sports halls, all-weather floodlit pitches; these top-class facilities to be located in commercial urban growth centres. This allows a range of family sport activities to be combined with other activities such as shopping, visit to library, restaurant visit etc. and generates more users. None of the 3 pools fulfil the above requirements. No credible marketing campaign could be mounted round any of them.
c) All 3 pools are grossly underused with previous users moving to other modern facilities both private and public.
d) All 3 pools cost between 5 and 10 times their income to operate and have a combined operating loss of €1.1m approximately. As previously stated on a number of occasions, this loss can be reduced by opening for less hours (say cancel all public hours and open for consolidated school/club use only). In addition all three pools require capital remedial works to plants, have high operational costs due to their age, and now require a major refurbishment if they are to continue to operate on a long-term basis. Comparison with similar private pools is not quite like with like as schools and religious facilities do not pay rates. It will be recalled that it was stated that significant voluntary work went into some of these pools also. (In relation to staff costs of 3 pools it should be noted that manning is kept to minimum numbers and that pay and allowances are at a nationally agreed rates for existing staff).