Minister to move on fixed term for HSI chairman
As revealed in last Monday’s Irish Examiner, Mr Varadkar considers it a breach of governance, while his spokesperson also described the fact HSI was not set up as a statutory body enacted by legislation as “unusual”, to say the least.
“In line with best practice in corporate governance, it is appropriate that a chairperson’s term of office would have an expiry date. The Department is examining the matter with a view to ensuring that suitable governance procedures are put in place in this regard.”
Last night, chairman Joe Walsh broke his silence, saying he had written to the previous Minister for Sport Mary Hanafin in 2010 regarding the open-ended tenure.
“Of course it is important to have a fixed term for the chairman of any organisation. In this regard, I wrote to the previous Minister for Sport back in April 2010 pointing out that no term had been set for the chairmanship of Horse Sport Ireland and I suggested that a defined term, perhaps coinciding with the Olympic cycle, would be more appropriate.
“I have recently written to Mr Varadkar seeking to meet him about the matter. The minister has replied and I expect that a meeting will take place early in the New Year,” he said.
“The chairmanship of Horse Sport Ireland is entirely a voluntary role, no fees are paid to me or any of the other Horse Sport Ireland directors,” he said.
As regards the decision to formulate HSI as limited company, Walsh said this was a result of a recommendation in the Dowling Report.
HSI was established in 2006 by Fianna Fáil’s then Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan and then Sports Minister John O’Donoghue. It has been chaired since its inception by their party colleague Walsh.
The chairman of HSI is nominated by the Sports Minister (Mr Varadkar), in consultation with the Agriculture Minister (currently Simon Coveney) and it remains to be seen if they will go along with Walsh’s proposal to set the Olympics as the cut-off date.
Above all, though, one can ask why no rule was initially put in place regarding a length of tenure for the chairman and why HSI was set up as a limited company and not a statutory body?
For example, and by contrast, Horse Racing Ireland was established in 2001 as a statutory body by Mr Walsh, as the then Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development. As such, it is covered by Freedom of Information (FoI) legislation, but not HSI as a company limited by guarantee.
However, a Department of Public Expenditure and Reform spokesperson this week said that, as part of the Programme for Government, it was undertaking a review of bodies covered by the FoI Act together with those bodies that are not. HSI is included in the review process and the minister will bring proposals to the Government in the new year.
Meanwhile, HSI only this week finalised its anti-doping and medication programme, though it is set to come into place on January 1. HSI has had to schedule an EGM on December 22 to put the policy before its board for ratification.
While a number of drafts have been circulated to date, the proposed final draft was not issued until Thursday of this week.
ShowjumpingIreland is the only body to have previously undertaken national testing.
A HSI spokesperson said: “We intend to have the rules in place for January 1, but, as previously outlined, testing will not begin until April.”
He said a series of regional seminars are planned in the spring for participants in all disciplines.
* JESSICA KÜRTEN placed sixth in the non-World Cup grand prix in Geneva, Switzerland, last night, producing a double clear with the 10-year-old API Largo.
On Thursday, Dermott Lennon won the day’s feature speed class with Judith Sossick’s Limmerick mare Loughview Lou Lou. Tipperary’s Denis Lynch and Upsilon d’Ocquier were among three to share first place in the Six-Bar class.
