Mr. John Delaney:

In response to Deputy Fitzpatrick, what Dundalk achieved was exceptional and made everybody in Ireland proud, especially those in Irish football. Everybody adopted Dundalk as their League of Ireland team, particularly in respect of its performance in Europe. We have given an allowance to all the clubs to develop a strategic plan and 15 strategies are in. We will work with the 20 clubs when the full strategies are in regarding how we implement them. The key to making League of Ireland clubs stronger is making them stronger in the community. Therefore, the under 15, under 17 and under 19 national leagues are really important, as are the improvement of facilities and infrastructure. When Dundalk and Cork, which did very well in Europe as well, reach certain standards and do well, it means that other clubs will aim to raise their own standards. In the case of Shamrock Rovers, the third stand in Tallaght has been completed and the club has an academy in Roadstone. Again, this is an example of a club that is on the rise again.

In respect of gender quotas, what I said clearly was that we have come to an agreement with the WFAI, which is very happy about what we have agreed in terms of consultation, namely, that there would be one woman on the board of the FAI. Along with Mr. Browne, I do not see the requirement for gender quotas. If the game is being developed correctly with the affiliate and it is happy with how we are developing participation and giving representation, we are better off doing real stuff and making it happen rather than engaging in tokenism. It can be seen and there is no doubt that the association has achieved a lot of success in women's football and will definitely achieve more into the future.

The decision regarding the ten teams of ten came from the Premier Clubs Alliance which voted on that. I understand that the first division clubs did not have a vote on that matter.

In response to Deputy Murphy's question, sometimes what someone may read is not always the way it is in reality, so perhaps some of the Deputy's impressions were formed through media reports. We publish our accounts. We hand them to the media on the given day. Our accounts are freely available to anybody who wants to see them. Questions in advance are requested but the real work of the FAI at committee level is done week in, week out. There are hundreds of meetings, including national committee meetings, executive meetings, board meetings and national council meetings. Many questions are asked at those meetings. The AGM might just be a snapshot in time but the real work of the association is done in the other 364 days and many questions are asked daily. I assure the Deputy that when I leave this chamber, there will be many questions waiting for me.

We do publish our accounts and, under the new governance structures requested by the Minister of State, we will put them online. In respect of the new governance structures the Minister of State recently outlined at a meeting giving all the sporting bodies a few years to implement them, I assure the committee that we will comfortably meet anything asked of us.