Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will. I cannot think of anyone more suited to this role than Mr. Mulvey. I fully support his stewardship of Sport Ireland. I would like to ask a question about that body. It is possible that the 2023 Rugby World Cup will potentially be held in Ireland. Is Sport Ireland going to be involved in that process?

The issue of governance is a core one for an Oireachtas committee because public money is being channelled through the Irish Sports Council to the IABA. That is a fundamental issue for this committee. Mr. Mulvey has gone through it. When one looks at the members of the board of the IABA, one thinks on the face of it that they look like people of calibre. The board includes legal representatives, businesspeople, solicitors, managers, building contractors and people involved in boxing and other sports. They should know from their own experiences about their governance responsibilities with respect to public funds and all the rest of it. Does Mr. Mulvey think it would be appropriate at this time to have representatives of Sports Ireland or the Irish Sports Council, or people nominated by them, sitting on the boards of the national governing bodies to oversee how public money is being spent through the governing bodies and to report back directly to Sports Ireland, the Irish Sports Council or the Oireachtas? It seems that this is not just an IABA issue - it could well be an issue in respect of all the national governing bodies. When a dispute like this happens, there seems to be a real disconnect when it comes to accountability for public money. In this case, the Minister for sport has got involved and has clearly been left deeply frustrated. Similar examples can be seen globally. Mr. Mulvey has touched on what has happened in the high-performance units in Britain. We are aware of what has happened in FIFA. Do we have any idea of what the IABA's sponsors think about all of this? If I was sponsoring the IABA, or if someone I knew was sponsoring it, I would not be best pleased about the controversy that has blown up in front of that organisation. I ask Mr. Mulvey to comment purely on the governance issue. Does he have views on how this difficulty could be dealt with in that respect?