Ross welcomes appointment of independent directors of FAI

Sports Minister Shane Ross has welcomed the appointment of three new independent directors of the Football Association of Ireland - but warned that the development does not mean the immediate restoration of government funding to the crisis-hit sporting body.

The FAI has appointed Goodbody Stockbrokers managing director Roy Barrett as their new independent chairperson, while Autolease Fleet Management chief executive Catherine Guy and Liz Joyce, director of human resources at the Central Bank of Ireland have joined the association’s board as independent directors.

Mr Ross said the appointment of three new independent directors - with a fourth expected shortly - will be a “beacon of hope” for football in Ireland.

The establishment of independent directors was a recommendation of a report into the debt-ridden FAI’s governance which was commissioned by Sport Ireland and conducted by accountancy firm KOSI.

“They're taking on an association with a debt of €60 million, they're taking on a formidable challenge, but we think that their advent, which has been sought for a very long time and been resisted by the FAI for a very long time, will mean that those who are the creditors and all the stakeholders will take great encouragement and all those people who attend football every weekend will look to them as a kind of beacon of hope for football in Ireland,” Mr Ross told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.

“We hope, and we believe that their leadership will be able to take the FAI from the awful backing morass and credit chaos which they're in,” he said.

Government funding to the FAI has been suspended in light of the revelations surrounding the association’s financing, but Mr Ross said further conditions must be met before this is restored.

“Government funding is not going to be immediately restored because the KOSI report, which is gone to the gardaí, did say that the association was not fit for government funding, and there were a lot of other conditions which they thought should be met, which included compliance with corporate governance,” he said.

What we see this is as an opening to the restoration of funds and if they implement those things which are identified by the KOSI report, which are corporate compliance, transparency and other things we do see, at not too early a date but an early date, a speedy recovery.

“We want to restore the government money, the €2.9m we give them every year, we want to restore money, we want to encourage those projects which get people on the playing fields, get the girls and the boys on there at the weekends. We're very eager to do that but they've got to comply with what was demanded by KOSI,” he said.

The FAI recently met with the Minister and asked for €18m to meet its short to medium term liabilities, but Mr Ross has ruled out any taxpayer bailout.

Shane Ross

“The €18m was asked for as we all know, and that was just a kind of bailout money. We're not going to bail them out. We're not going to just give them a blank check.

“The Taoiseach has said that, I've said that absolutely clearly, but what we've got to say is this; we've got a new dawn here, we've got a new opportunity, we've got new people who are going to produce a plan.

“Depending on that plan and the conditions in which it'll be imposed and implemented and who the other stakeholders are, we're prepared to look at anything, we're not going to provide funding unconditionally to anybody, but what is important to the government is football at the weekends, and schoolboy football and the volunteers and everybody who contributes football; they are part of Irish society. We're not running a commercial organization here.

“What we're trying to do is fund those really good parts of Irish society, which we've done already, and to encourage that," he said.