Mr. Joe Christle:

I thank the Chairman and the Senator. There is one thing that ties in with what the Senator said earlier. When I said in reading my statement that we wanted Billy to stay, Senator Eamonn Coghlan said he did not believe me. That is a perfectly valid opinion to hold, particularly having regard to the coverage in the media, but from 20 February through to the formal meetings with the Irish Sports Council and the proposals drawn up on 22 August, a number of solutions and options were put forward by the IABA to try to deal with the problem. It started off with whether he could become a contractor, in other words, with a contract for services. That was one suggestion made at the very start which would have obviated the need for relativism because he would have changed his status. We would then just have been looking to match what the yanks were going to pay him. The other option was offering a fixed-term contract. The indications were that that was what he would be getting in America and it did not seem unreasonable to offer him one here on similar terms. Again, that would have obviated the need because he would have changed the terms of his employment.

The other proposition put forward again by the IABA was to waive his exclusivity of service contract within his contract that he was now on as the highest paid permanent employee and the head coach of boxing. At no stage did the IABA want to interfere in any way in that contract, except to offer to waive that and work with the Sports Council to seek increases in wages and bonuses. The only thing that we were putting forward was the proposition that if a bonus is paid to the coach it should also be paid to the boxer, in the sense that they are the ones taking the wallops, and when the bell goes one gets out of the ring and the other stays in. Therefore, that seemed a not unreasonable proposition and it was, in fact, acceded to by the Minister and by the Sports Council in the proposition that was put together in Athlone on 11 September.