Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise because I had to go to other meetings and come back and this question may have been asked already. In the interests of openness and transparency, the business plan that the FAI presented to the Minister on Monday should be provided and made available to the public. Is the business plan credible? If we are going to start a culture of openness and transparency, we should start with the business plan and it should have been circulated to the members of the committee. The FAI seems to be good at avoiding meeting Sports Ireland, the Minister and this committee. The FAI has previously supplied documents that we have seen and which are not credible. I ask the Minister to provide to the public by this evening the business plan that was proposed. The Government is being asked to bail out the FAI and we need to know whether there is any credibility to its business plan.

I also raise the competency of Deloitte as an auditor although I know it can only deal with the figures it is given. There must have been interest payments on the loan. Did Deloitte ever question the figures that were presented? I ask the Minister and Sport Ireland how many other sporting organisations are Deloitte the auditor for. How many tickets did Deloitte get from the FAI when it was the auditor of the association? That would be insightful. Deloitte did not do its job.

Has the Minister made any efforts to find out from the FAI whether the county organisations are being run on the same basis as the FAI? The culture that exists at the top could seep into every county. We are talking about reforms and legislation, as we were the last time the Minister was before the committee, and that things have to change. During the term of this Government, there has been the Olympic Council of Ireland scandal and boxing has been an issue because the people in control at the top of those organisations have got money from the Government but the Government is unable to do what is in the best interests of the sports because the guys at the top are controlling everything. Power needs to be taken back by the Department and Government because fiefdoms have been created by people in different sporting organisations which are not being run in the best interests of those organisations but of the very few at the top. There have been issues about the greyhound industry and there are issues now with the FAI. What legislation has been brought in during his term to stop those sorts of things happening since we found out about the Olympic Council of Ireland?

Given the number of sporting organisations involved and the amount of time being wasted, is there a proposal that an audit will be done - I suggest by a company other than Deloitte - of those organisations? Instead of us having to bail out the FAI at Christmas in order to keep people who are in jeopardy of losing their jobs because of the incompetence of the bosses in their jobs, we must ensure that we will not be back here again in six months or a couple of years' time discussing another sporting organisation that is being run by individuals for their own gain and profit. Is the Government proposing that there will be a forensic review? That is the only way it will work because the auditors seem to be beyond useless. They are off bolting doors after the horse, or the greyhound in some cases, has gone down the field. What does the Government intend to do and what legislation has been introduced since we started dealing with the issues relating to the Olympic Council of Ireland?

I want to raise another issue regarding what was brought up here about pension entitlements-----