Pádraig Ó Céidigh (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chairman for letting me in before the break. He will recall that I sent him a letter concerning this meeting. I will be brief as colleagues have asked a lot of good questions. Having audited its accounts, Deloitte announced that the FAI is effectively bust. Let us call a spade a spade. Before indicating its intention to resign as auditor, Deloitte restated the 2017 accounts from approximately €2.7 million of a profit to a loss of €2.7 million, which is a shift of about €5.5 million. I have some sympathy and understanding for Sport Ireland and the challenges it faces because, it seems, it bases its review, to a large degree, on independent audited accounts. Having said that, I have the Sport Ireland Act 2015, to which several speakers referred, in front of me, and I take issue with one or two of the points Mr. Treacy made in that regard.

Section 11 of the Act, which sets out the criteria, terms and conditions of assistance, states, in subsection (3)(a), that Sport Ireland may "request any person or body applying for or receiving assistance under section 8(4)(a) to supply Sport Ireland with information in such form and at such time as it may require". This means that Sport Ireland has absolute flexibility in terms of how deep it wants to dive. I have the transcript of the meeting where I asked whether Sport Ireland had identified any red flags in this regard, in response to which Mr. Treacy did not highlight any concerns. To me, a red flag was raised when Deputy Jonathan O'Brien or Deputy MacSharry - I am not sure which of them it was - asked whether there had been a meeting with the board of the FAI. The answer given was that there was one such meeting in 2015 and there were two further occasions on which members of the board were invited in by Sport Ireland but did not show up. Did they give a reason for not showing up? Subsequent to their not showing up, Sport Ireland still gave the FAI €2.9 million in funding in January or February of this year. Will Mr. Treacy comment on that?