Clubhouse Booking Rule
The committee of a Dublin cycling club has approved this rule for private use of the clubhouse: 'A member may book the clubhouse for a private event only if that member has held continuous membership for at least two years and has not lent or hired out club equipment in the preceding twelve months. The two-year membership condition does not apply where the event is a registered charity fundraiser, but the equipment condition always applies.' Five members apply in March. Aoife: member for three years, lent a club turbo trainer to a neighbouring club last June, wants a birthday party. Ciarán: member for eighteen months, has never handled club equipment, wants a charity quiz night. Niamh: member for five years, no equipment lent, wants a private anniversary dinner for 40. Oisín: member for exactly two years and one day, no equipment lent, wants a charity table quiz. Sinéad: joined in 2019, let her membership lapse for three months in 2024 and rejoined in October 2024, no equipment lent, wants a private retirement party.
1. For each of the five members, state whether the booking must be granted under the rule as written. Identify the one case that turns on the interpretation of a single word, and name that word.
Read the worked answer
Aoife - refused. She meets the two-year condition, but the equipment condition fails. The window is 'the preceding twelve months' measured from the booking date (March), so it reaches back to the previous March and includes last June. Reasoning that 'the loan was last year' substitutes the calendar year for the rolling twelve-month window and is wrong.
Ciarán - granted. The event is a registered charity fundraiser, so the two-year condition is disapplied; his eighteen months do not matter. The equipment condition is met and is not waivable.
Niamh - granted. Five years' membership and no equipment lent; neither condition is in issue.
Oisín - granted. 'At least two years' is satisfied by two years and one day, so this would pass even as a private event; as a charity event the point is moot.
Sinéad - refused. Her event is private, so no waiver applies. She has held membership since 2019 but not continuous membership for two years: the 2024 lapse broke continuity, and she has only about five months of unbroken membership since rejoining.** The deciding word is 'continuous' - the rule nowhere says that a lapse is forgiven or that only current membership counts.
2. The secretary argues that the rule bars anyone who has ever lent club equipment, and proposes to enforce it that way. Assess this reading and draft the minimum wording change that would produce the secretary's intended result.
Read the worked answer
The reading fails on the plain text. The equipment condition is expressly time-limited - 'in the preceding twelve months' - so a loan made two or three years ago falls outside it. A general bar would require deleting those five words or replacing them with an open-ended phrase.
The wider context points the same way: the drafter chose to make one condition absolute ('the equipment condition always applies') and one condition time-limited, which shows the twelve-month limit was deliberate rather than incidental. Reading it out of the rule would also make 'always applies' redundant, since it would then bar every lender ever.
Minimum change: replace 'in the preceding twelve months' with 'at any time'. The sentence would then read '...has not lent or hired out club equipment at any time', achieving the secretary's intention without touching anything else. Because this is a substantive tightening, it should be adopted as an amendment at a properly minuted meeting, not applied retrospectively to applications already received.
3. A member argues the committee may waive the equipment condition for a charity fundraiser. Using only the text, assess the argument and say what the drafter would have had to write to permit it.
Read the worked answer
The argument fails. The waiver sentence is drafted narrowly: it disapplies 'the two-year membership condition' and nothing else, and the very next clause states that the equipment condition 'always applies'. Read together, the two sentences allocate the waiver to one condition only.
The structure also supports this. If the drafter had meant charity events to be exempt from both conditions, the rule could simply have said that charity fundraisers are exempt; instead it names one condition and then adds an absolute statement about the other. The word 'always' is doing deliberate work.
To permit the waiver the rule would need wording such as: 'Where the event is a registered charity fundraiser, neither the two-year membership condition nor the equipment condition applies', or an added clause 'The committee may waive the equipment condition for a registered charity fundraiser by resolution'. Absent that, a committee decision to waive would be a breach of the club's own rule, and the safest course is to refuse and invite the member to seek an amendment.