Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 25 November 2021

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 33 - Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media
Chapter 7 - Oversight of Funding for the European Capital of Culture 2020

9:30 am

Mr. Cian Ó Lionáin:

Apologies. There is a memorandum of understanding and a governance review group has been established to monitor this process. There is an annual payment to the FAI. I am afraid I am looking at 2021 figures at present. In 2021, €5.8 million was paid and there is a separate payment of just over €2 million that goes towards its costs for the Aviva Stadium. There is a very strong governance oversight process on this, which is managed by Sport Ireland's governance oversight group. It is a joint partnership between Sport Ireland in the FAI. It is critically measuring the FAI and comparing how it performs in more than 160 different indicators arising out of the various reviews of recent years and how it is delivering on them. In October, we were told it had satisfactorily completed more than 120 of these.