Boylesports in row over 'cult' training course
The Sunday Times, Aine Coffey
Dialogue Ireland, a cult-awareness group, claims it has been contacted by employees of Boylesports, the country’s second-biggest bookmaker, after the company owned by John Boyle introduced a compulsory training programme for them.
Boyle, an acknowledged follower of the “mind technology” principles of businessman Tony Quinn, launched the Boylesports Academy for Success six weeks ago.
“Dialogue Ireland has received a number of anonymous requests for assistance,” said Mike Garde, its director. “People are at their wits’ end. They don’t know what to do because they are being made to attend these courses.”
Boyle confirmed that the courses were compulsory at Boylesports, which employs 1,200 people, but said they were nothing to do with Quinn. “T don’t even think about Tony Quinn,” he said. “I focus on the success we need in current times.”
The Boylesports courses are being given by Georgina Dolan, a trainer who has also been associated with Quinn. Dolan appeared on the Late Late Show with Quinn in 1994 as one of the subjects he had hypnotised before they underwent surgery without anaesthetic.
Boyle said that the courses were focused entirely on improving business productivity.
“This is just a new academy set up for pure success, helping people to focus on jobs, customers, to concentrate,” he said.
A circular to staff describing the bookmaker’s training programme described it is a big investment designed to help staff reach their full potential.
One element involves stress relief to improve productivity. “When people’s ‘minds are occupied by fear, anger, jealousy, blame, conspiracy, suspicion and other negative emotions, their clarity of thought and mental and physical agility is degraded, leading to lower quantity and quality of work,” it notes.
Boyle said he already had a business with €90m in turnover before he attended Quinn’s mind-power seminars, and that he was an avid reader both of self-help literature and of books by high-achieving business people, such as Richard Branson and Alan Sugar.
“I believe totally in myself and my business,” he said. “I am not part of anything other than being John Boyle, the best that John Boyle can be. What I want to do is train people to be the best they can. If it is going to reduce stress and increase vitality, I say that is a good thing.”
Quinn is embroiled in a court dispute in the British Virgin Islands with a former fellow director of International Natural Energy (INE), which discovered large oil reserves in Belize. He is president of INE, whose 82 original investors and directors had all attended his mind-power seminars.
INE has earned more than $750m (€537m) from oil wells in Belize since 2005, according to dissident shareholders, but has never paid dividends. A planned $23m pay-out to Quinn for shares he was gifted has been blocked by the commercial division of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court pending the outcome of a full hearing into the case.
Quinn has denied mismanagement of INE.
Article sourced from Dialogue Ireland