Mr. Colm McGinty:

There are 163 recommendations and we oversee that. We maintain a tracker to monitor the FAI’s implementation of those recommendations and commitments. Our area of focus is ensuring that the improvements in governance within the FAI are implemented in a sustainable way and a way they can sustain business as usual and be integral to the way the FAI is managed going forward. It has made significant progress in the past three years but there is still a journey to go. The MoU runs until the end of this year. We are working with the FAI on those areas where it still needs to imbed and implement across various items.

It requires constant effort. Governance is never done; it is an ongoing process. It is resource-intensive and requires effort. We look at the MoU and some of the safeguards built within that. The appointment of independent directors was significant and an absolutely fundamental control. The FAI went through an organisational restructure underpinned by a complete constitutional reform. A new board put in place and there are six independent directors there at the moment. There is a audit and risk committee in place. There is much more enhanced internal control environment in the FAI.

The adoption of the electoral code was interesting. It governed how the FAI conduct its elections at general meetings. It now has put in place an integrity assessment to ensure that all candidates’ membership for a board have to go through an independent verification and integrity assessment. Those are all positive developments. The FAI and any organisation that we fund and any area of governance requires constant work and effort.