Mr. Gerard Perry:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for her good wishes and for acknowledging the successes of our women's team last night. It was great to see and to see so many people tune in.

On behalf of the Football Association of Ireland, I thank the Joint Committee on Tourism, Culture, Arts, Sport and Media for the opportunity to address this meeting on issues relating to the abuse of referees, officials and players across different sporting codes. I am the chair of the Football Association of Ireland’s referee’s committee whose responsibility is the governance of all referee matters within the association. All the referee committee members are volunteers.

As the biggest participation sport in the country, football provides so much pleasure to so many players, coaches, volunteers, officials and, of course, referees or match officials. Our referees currently cater for more than 80 leagues across the country and in excess of 220,000 registered players. The benefits of football to Irish society are immense and across so many areas not least the physical and mental well-being of all involved, including players and match officials. As such, it goes without saying that in order for players to play competitive matches, we need match officials to take charge of them. Referees are an integral part of the game, and our current social media campaign highlights no ref, no game; respect the referee.

Everyone in the FAI is well aware of the current issues around the abuse of referees, other match officials and even players and team officials. Unfortunately, this appears to be a growing problem in Irish society and across many codes, not just football. The recent cancellation of an entire weekend’s programme of underage games in one league is the most recent manifestation of this problem, and it highlights the concerns of all involved with grassroots football and our united desire to combat this issue at all levels of the game before it threatens mass participation in our very game.

This issue is now coming to a head, but it is not a new one. As recently as 2018, football’s world governing body, FIFA, warned all national associations, including players, coaches and spectators, that the current trend of abuse towards referees would result in a global shortage of match officials. Ireland has not escaped this scourge but we are taking steps. Since 2019, 34 cases of physical abuse of match officials have been brought before the disciplinary control unit of the Football Association of Ireland. As members will see from documentation forwarded to the committee, 22 of those cases resulted in long-term suspensions for those found guilty of physical abuse, ranging from 12 to 24 months.

We cannot and will not tolerate the abuse of any match official. The onus to respect the referee in the first instance falls on the players, then the coaches, the club and supporters. We are involved in education programmes to best inform all involved of their obligations to respect referees, and we have also engaged in a social media campaign featuring grassroots officials to highlight this with the hashtags, #NoRefNoGame and #RespectTheReferee. As members will see from the documentation sent to them, this campaign was highlighted at the recent Ireland versus Portugal international game at the Aviva Stadium when the message was captured live on television.

We are also actively working with existing and new referees to ensure they feel safe when they cross the white line to take charge of matches. While our referee numbers fell from 1,400 to 1,200 between 2015 and 2020, over the last 18 months we have successfully launched a recruitment drive. At the start of 2021, while we had 1,211 registered referees, that figure has already grown to 1,430 referees today after 581 recruits to the online course, 261 of whom are already allocated to leagues and 281 awaiting Garda vetting.