Mr. Joe Christle:

I will deal with some of the questions you asked and I will then refer to Mr. Ciaran Kirwan, a solicitor with nearly 30 years experience. He is a volunteer director who provides pro bonoadvice to the board on legal matters. He had specific oversight of the creation and development of the contract stage.

In advance of that, earlier you asked about the IABA's plans for the future. If I can refer to last week, once this bombshell - which was a bombshell and a shock to everybody on Monday - was absorbed there was a scheduled meeting on Tuesday in which all the coaches were meeting to carry out a particular task regarding budgeting.

At that meeting we discussed with all the coaches and support staff the issues around having a leaderless team. Zaur Antia, who as technical coach in the high performance unit was one position below Billy Walsh, was appointed as interim head coach of the high performance or elite athletes. That decision was made with the full support of the coaching staff and the board.

We have scheduled a board meeting for next Wednesday at which all the issues that arose last week and in the media coverage will be discussed and a plan put together for filling the position previously occupied by Billy Walsh. At that meeting, we will, as the Chairman alluded to, be going back over the history of the directorship of the high performance unit. In 2008, the director of high performance left the IABA high performance programme and that position was not filled for two years. It was advertised and Billy Walsh was one of the many applicants for the position. The candidate who was chosen was not acceptable either to the Irish Sports Council or to Billy Walsh - to work under him. As a consequence of that, a new title was created for that person's appointment, namely, director of boxing development. I realise I may be losing members' attention but it is very important to outline the history and timeline of all of this.

The board of directors has never been comfortable with the notion that there was no director of high performance. Billy Walsh had continued as head coach and was, to all intents and purposes, de factooperating as director of high performance, notwithstanding that he was under the title of head coach. There were some administrative qualities that had let him down in the interview process which were recognised by all sides this year. With the assistance of the Irish Sports Council, now Sport Ireland, funding was made available for the position of administrative assistant to the high performance coach. That position was filled this year, with Caradh O'Donovan starting work in May or June this year. Caradh came over from Triathlon Ireland with all the qualifications in sports management that were required for the position and she has integrated well within our organisation.

Reference was made to a gap in communication between the IABA and the Irish Sports Council. In my capacity as chairman - I am only chairman since July 2014 - I have not had any personal experience of that. I enjoy a very warm relationship with the chairman and other members of the council and the board of directors is very cognisant of the importance of fostering that relationship. The board has gone through a seismic change in terms of its constitution in the past year, with the rewriting of the memorandum and articles of association.

All of the recommendations in the strategic plan for boxing, put together by a joint committee in 2011, have been moved forward and were outlined in the submission.

To answer the final question, notwithstanding that the results appear to say it works, the selection process was recognised as something that needed a little bit of change or revision. This has been revised in the new draft rule book. According to the current rule book, which is the 2006 boxing rule book, the final authority for sanctioning a team is the boxing council. Since 2008, when Mr. Walsh stepped forward, his selections or recommendations have never been gainsaid. They have only been added to, notably with the choice of Paddy Barnes in 2008, who was not part of the high performance unit but was sanctioned by the boxing council to compete in the world championships in Chicago. He qualified for the Olympics first and, as we know, he podiumed in Beijing and London. He remains part of the high performance unit and has qualified for the Rio games.

We recognised that having the team sanctioned by a committee of 38 members would be unworkable in the future and, because of the changes in boxing, we wanted to introduce an objective set of criteria, which is what is in the draft rule book. This is significant in terms of the relationship between the board, particularly the chief executive officer, and the former head coach. Billy Walsh had a direct hand in drafting the new rule. It has yet to be ratified by the clubs, but it was only sent out in the past month. What the Chairman identified as a governance weakness is one recognised by the current board, and it has been addressed by it with the assistance of Billy Walsh.

I will ask Mr. Kirwan to deal with the specific questions on the contract.