Mr. Colm McGinty:

With regard to the practical response to the FAI, it was a wake-up call for the sector. It is absolutely the case that a governance difficulty or crisis in one organisation can have an impact on the wider sports sector. We recognise that. In 2019, we brought in changes to the terms and conditions of funding, including strengthening the audit clause to confer full audit rights on Sport Ireland whereby its auditors would be entitled to not just follow the money but also look at the wider governance of an organisation. That applies to the FAI and any organisation that we fund. The governance code has come on the back of that. It is influencing positive change and it is improving standards in governance across the sector.

I will also speak to our role as a developmental organisation. Our Gov-Enhance programme was a new sector specific governance support programme that we rolled out. It is a distinct and new programme that we rolled out in 2020 in support of our ongoing commitment to continuously build the governance capability in the sports sector. A total of 28 events were delivered in 2021. More than 1,700 people attended those events, networks, seminars and masterclasses, and one-to-one governance clinics. All of these were around improving the governance capability of the sports sector.

A point was alluded to around the self-declaration process. Ethical behaviour at board level will trump codes all day long. We have spent a great deal of time and placed much emphasis in our Gov-Enhance programme around principle 5 of the governance code, which is around behaviour behaving with integrity. Upholding the principle of integrity is a critically important foundation of governance, whether there is a regulator in sport, or whether Sport Ireland is overseeing our monitoring programme. We have put a lot of emphasis and focus on principle 5 of the code. We are not shy about saying that in our view it is the most important principle of the five principles in the code. If one gets that wrong, it does not matter what one gets right.

We have a compliance monitoring programme. It consists of random sampling, desk-based analysis of the governance code declarations and compliance record form reviews. We have upped our internal audit programme significantly. In 2021, a total of 31 audits were commissioned. We have rolled out that and the assurance process to underpin our ongoing assessment to monitor the organisations we fund and their compliance with the code. Where we find gaps or shortcomings, we work with the organisations involved to ensure that these are dealt with. We enter into a liaison process with them. We are very hands on and have a range of interventions around getting them into a state where they become compliant with the code and that they adopt the code. As I mentioned earlier, it is a constant process.