FAI boss paid bar tab ‘out of his own pocket’

THE FAI has said money put behind the counter for Irish supporters in a Tallinn bar on Thursday night by chief executive John Delaney was “at his own personal cost” and not taken from association funds.

This wasn’t the first time Mr Delaney had made such a gesture. He also bought beers for hundreds of Irish fans travelling on a train from Bratislava to Zilina last year but this latest spend inadvertently kicked off a minor controversy.

It was first mentioned on RTÉ radio and later a tweet from one journalist in Tallinn remarked it would be “beyond shameful” if the FAI had paid for the tab in a week when it was making a handful of employees redundant at its Abbotstown headquarters in Dublin.

A spokesman clarified that the money had come from Delaney’s own pocket.

Reports that €2,000 was put up at the No Name bar by the Waterford man as a personal “thank you” to visiting Irish fans for travelling to the Estonian capital were revised downwards by 50% by some customers who were in the premises at the time.

The bar was a popular haunt for Shamrock Rovers fans when they played FC Flora Tallinn last summer. Just off the main square in the picturesque Old Town, it was packed with locals and Irish supporters ahead of last night’s Euro 2012 qualifier against Estonia.

It also emerged last night that Delaney, who is independently wealthy and on a salary of over €400,000 a year as FAI chief, bought match tickets from Estonian touts and handed them over Republic of Ireland supporters.