Mr. Ronan Corrigan:

We were the first ones to start looking at this, and we asked that question collectively when affiliates attended a meeting with HSI. When the board resigned, the Minister was perfectly entitled to make his appointments. Within the old pre-January 2024 constitution of HSI, it stated that where the directors representing the councils have resigned, it is incumbent on the remainder of the board to ensure the councils meet to appoint a new director to replace them. I referenced that in our statement. When we met this committee last year, our understanding leaving the room was that the interim board of HSI would facilitate that. The councils would reform and be taken out of abeyance, which they were put into. They would appoint new chairpersons, those chairpersons would then take their seats on the board, and if there were a change to be made for whatever purpose at least the industry would be involved in it and have buy-in because those directors were reporting directly back to the councils, which were populated by the affiliates. Everybody was happy that would work. What happened was the interim board ignored what we had asked it. We also asked it directly to do that in October last year when we sat in a meeting in the HSI board room. We asked for that same thing to be done. What happened instead was the interim board held an AGM. It had a quorum, so it was entitled to hold an AGM, but it devised and adopted a brand-new constitution. That constitution did not have the input of directors' representatives from the councils that were written into the old constitution, and which were populated by the affiliates. I would not like to say anyone acted illegally, but we have a scenario where good faith was certainly not being used, in that the industry was left aside from having insider involvement in the rewriting of a constitution that was going to affect the industry. That is one of the fundamental problems. The constitution now has written out the councils, written out the make-up of the councils, written out the direct representation as to how a chairperson or whoever comes forward to it, so it has taken away the need to have what they now call the forums. The forums can be changed by the board within its own constitution. That is clear when you read the new constitution of HSI. It is a limited company, but it is predominantly funded by the State. It has some commercial elements within it, but it is funded by the State. Where affiliates, as they were, have concerns is that we now have an entity in which they have a limited input, that can decide to carry out actions that could have serious impacts on those affiliates and that it is endowed with a title which is the national governing body for high-performance sport. When that title was endowed to it circa 2006 under the Dowling report it was with the buy-in of the then affiliates and the handing over that title from the old EFI. The EFI gave it on the basis that, at the time, the affiliates had direct representation onto the board. They had people sitting directly on the board to look after sporting industry interests. It was a big board, and I am not saying it was perfect. It changed under the Indecon review. The affiliates still lived with it. They were quite happy with it, but this constitution has been changed without any consultation with the industry similar to that which took place as part of the Indecon review. They were not deeply involved in the changes that have been made. Mr. Byrne alluded to it. He was invited to become a member of something into which he had no input and no knowledge of how it was going to function.