FAI must choose between loyalty to the fans and Murdoch's millions

I HAVE a few more things I need to get off my chest about the Ansbacher Report, but first could I make one small point about the FAI and its disgusting deal with Rupert Murdoch.

On March 6 last year, the Government committed £45 million to the FAI in respect of its participation in Stadium Ireland, and promised further money for the overall development of the game in Ireland. In all, the FAI were guaranteed over £50 million over a few years that's over 60 million euro.

The FAI started negotiations with Murdoch immediately after clinching that deal (it was reported in the papers on March 21, 2001), although it never occurred to them to let it be known that what they were negotiating was the kind of exclusivity that would effectively bar people who weren't subscribers to Sky Sports from supporting their country.

Everyone I have talked to in the last few weeks has agreed with the view that RTÉ had a superb World Cup. The coverage, the analysis and the reportage on radio and television far outstripped what was to be found on either ITV or BBC. It was a classic piece of public service broadcasting because it was done on a shoestring, but to very high production standards, and in a way that was entirely inclusive. They didn't just bring football to the fans they brought it to everybody. And what that means is they allowed families to support Ireland, and not just men gathered in pubs.

It's not a surprise to discover that RTÉ was unable to match the depths of Rupert Murdoch's pockets when it came to bidding for the rights to internationals. In fact, Murdoch's negotiators must have been thrilled to realise that they were up against an organisation that is really struggling to keep a top class service going, across the spectrum that public service broadcasting required, against a background of financial crisis and change.

What was a surprise although perhaps it oughtn't to have been was the way the FAI succumbed to greed. The hypocrisy explicit in their defence that they need the money to develop the game is blatant. Not only have they got a barrelful of taxpayers' money to develop the game, but how they hope to succeed by forcing fans into the pay-per-view ambitions of Sky television is a mystery.

I approved of the public money going to the FAI. And, in general, there isn't much point in attaching strings to a grant to a voluntary organisation. But the Government should immediately call in the FAI and tell them in no uncertain terms that if they are going to enter into these exclusive deals that deprive families of the right to watch our national team, there will be no more public money.

The FAI should be told to make a choice, right now, between Rupert Murdoch's money or ours. They shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.

We have of, course, had greed and hypocrisy in abundance in the last few days. But we've also had too much rationalising and apologising.

For instance, here's a newspaper paragraph that I'll bet you've never read before: "Back then in the '70s, the black economy flourished because people really had no choice. Unemployed people had to do nixers while they signed on, because they couldn't feed their families properly otherwise. Single people on unemployment assistance got a miserly £7.70 a week, while a married man with two children got no more than £17.95 a week. The children's allowance (for one child) was about 56 pence a week. The old age pension was £8.85 a week, but it was reduced by a pound for every pound of private income the pensioner had over £6, so that it became zero if the pensioner had another pension of £14 a week.

"Naturally, in those circumstances, men had no choice but to fiddle on the welfare, and pensioners had to hide their private means as well as they could."

Those figures are accurate by the way, for the year 1975, and aren't they astonishing? But you never saw any newspaper columnist defending dole fraud on those grounds. Instead, an entirely new language was created to stigmatise and criminalise anyone found cheating on welfare spongers, layabouts, cheats and robbers they were.

Now compare that mythical paragraph with the following, culled from one of last Sunday's newspapers. It was typical of a lot of the commentary that we heard and read, and it was accompanied by graphs to make the point further. "Exceptionally high tax rates were one reason why may people managed not to be as scrupulous about their taxes as they might. When Richie Ryan was Finance Minister in the mid-'70s, the top personal tax rate on salaries of little over £10,000 was 77% (and in one of those years annual inflation topped 20%). The top rate was brought down later (to 60%) only to go up again (this time to 65%), but special levies on income like the Health Levy and the Employment and Training Levy offered little relief to the Irish taxpayer."

It's true tax rates were high then, for reasons I outlined yesterday (Irish Examiner, Analysis). It certainly wasn't the wish of Mr the Minister for Finance of the day, Richie RRyan, who struggled desperately to cope with forces outside his control, like one oil shock after another that threatened to bankrupt the economy.

Mind you, I love the reference to "salaries of little over £10,000". I bought a house, a grand house, in 1977 for just over £10,000, so it wasn't a sum to be sneezed at.

As you can see from the figures at the time, £10,000 was considered enough to provide for 11 unemployed families, each with two children. But the real point surely was this. Times were hard in the '70s for everyone. Our country was struggling to deal with circumstances of enormous difficulty. And still at the same time we were beginning to develop the infrastructure of the modern Ireland we enjoy today. That much-maligned government consolidated our relationship with Europe, began the major investment in telecommunications that has positioned us where we are, and built the schools and classrooms to deliver on the promise of free secondary education.

You would think, wouldn't you, that when troubles hit, there would have been at least some sense that better-off people would consider putting their shoulders to the wheel, some notion of national solidarity? The opposite, it turns out, was the case. People with the opportunity to cheat, cheated. And the result was that the burden got worse for everyone.

Whatever we do now, let's at least, for God's sake, stop excusing it. I have no interest in seeing anyone go to jail. I'd be quite happy to know that taxes are paid up and that we have learned something from the whole affair. And I'd be equally happy if, the next few times someone is up in court for cheating on the dole, they were let off with a last chance. If we're going to wipe the slate clean, let's do it for everyone. If we're going to get serious about cheating in future, let's apply that to everyone too.