Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy MacSharry for raising this important matter. The Deputy will recall that since the scale of the governance of financial mismanagement within the FAI became clear over the past year, the FAI has been in a financial crisis the likes of which has never been faced by an Irish sporting body. On 30 January, the then Government took the decision to ensure the survival of the association by approving an agreement to participate in a joint funding package for the FAI. The MOA which was signed by the then Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Shane Ross, and Mr. Roy Barrett, chairperson of the FAI, was an important and necessary measure in enabling the Government to participate in that financial support package.

The MOU enabled Sport Ireland to restore funding to the FAI of €2.9 million per annum and to provide additional annual funding of €2.9 million for football development up to 2023. It also provides for a repayable grant of just over €7.6 million to the FAI to pay its license fee for the Aviva Stadium up to 2022.

The MOU sets out the conditions for receipt of this funding including necessary constitutional and council reform and corporate governance and financial reforms. The conditions were accepted by the FAI and the other relevant stakeholders, namely, UEFA and the Bank of Ireland. Sport Ireland remains in communication with the FAI in matters relating to its governance and financial management. It has established a process to oversee and review adherence by the association to the commitments given in the MOU.

The FAI has committed to implementing certain recommendations on governance reform and Sport Ireland expects to be in a position to restore funding to the association when these commitments are verifiably honoured. To be clear, the conditions in the MOU must be implemented in full. There will be no renegotiation of the terms of the MOU. The FAI must convene an extraordinary general meeting, EGM, this month to implement rule changes to provide for an increase to six independent directors on its board and for those members of the FAI council with more than ten years' service to stand down. If these rule changes are not implemented Sport Ireland, will be unable to disburse any funds to the FAI, including the Covid-19 support funding approved by the Government last month.

The Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Deputy Catherine Martin, and the then Minister of State with responsibility for sport, Deputy Calleary, wrote to the chairman of the FAI last Thursday to confirm that the new Government would not reopen any discussion on part of the MOU agreed by the previous Government. We confirmed that the conditions for governance reform were essential to rebuild public trust and to enable the disbursement of the funding package set out in the MOU and we confirmed our support for Sport Ireland to liaise with the FAI and to verify implementation of the governance and financial control requirements as agreed in January.

While we respect the autonomy of the national governing bodies of sport, we cannot tolerate a situation where the mismanagement of a funded body brings its very survival into question. The FAI board and council ultimately failed in their duty to the association and its members, the grassroots clubs and volunteers, to hold the executive leadership to account. This is why the Government had top step in to provide additional funding to safeguard the future of Irish soccer and the livelihoods of more than 200 people employed by the FAI. We could not ignore the findings of the KOSI auditors that the FAI in its previous form was not fit to receive public funding. We will be monitoring carefully the progress on reform and if there are any concerns we are seeing a return to the old FAI, we will not hesitate to suspend funding once again.

Irish soccer, like all sport in Ireland, has faced an unprecedented challenge this year and the return to sport will not be easy. That should be the focus of everyone involved in Irish soccer and I encourage the FAI to make all the necessary reforms without delay.

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