Mr. Kieran Mulvey:

I will answer that Chairman, but first I will summarise. Since the last meeting of the committee we took on board the voice of the committee as expressed to us very trenchantly at those hearings. We undertook the governance review, which Mr. Horan has outlined in detail, and I do not intend to go through that. An enormous amount of work has been done in a short period. We also undertook to appoint forensic auditor accountants. We had considerable difficulty in that as there was no response to our procurement. I personally contacted a number of firms after that. While they engaged in conversation, they were reluctant to get involved. This was largely related to reputational risk on behalf of some of these accountancy firms given that the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement was involved and Deloitte had put up a notice regarding it. There was a reluctance. We got a firm from Northern Ireland to undertake this forensic audit for us and we expect it to report by the end of September.

We have put an emphasis on the fact that there is a grant funding round to consider after the budget and we need the report in. The FAI is our biggest grant recipient in terms of national governing bodies. The committee had asked us to explore our options around the terms of grant funding and our possible stretch with regard to the legal powers Sport Ireland might have. We have done that and have now imposed, as we have submitted to this committee, new and onerous terms on governing bodies for their funding that go beyond the audit of funds given by Sport Ireland. Of importance is that these terms are obligatory on them and include the remuneration packages of chief executives on which there was pushback previously because of commercial sensitivity etc., as enunciated to us. Now we have cleared with our own auditors and legal advisers that this is quite within our remit to do in the context of new developments in corporate governance and so on. Those terms will be in place for all the submissions made for grant funding for 2020. We have met those specific concerns of the committee.

The Chairman asked about the board members. Sport Ireland is ad idemwith the Minister with regard to the issue he has raised with the president of the FAI.