O’Brien to continue paying ‘genius’ Trapattoni’s wages

BUSINESSMAN Denis O’Brien said he will continue to pay the wages of Giovanni Trapattoni and called the Ireland manager a genius.

Mr O’Brien said he has only met Mr Trapattoni for three minutes but said the job he has done with the Irish team has been amazing.

Last year it was revealed that Mr O’Brien had decided to part-fund Mr Trapattoni’s wages in a no-strings-attached deal.

He said he has signalled to John Delaney, the chief executive of the FAI, that he is happy to continue paying Mr Trappatoni’s wages.

“To be fair to John Delaney and the people that appointed Trappatoni they got that absolutely right,” he said.

He also said he can see people in Ireland not buying Gillette razors, as they are advertised by Thierry Henry. “FIFA need to look at themselves, the French need to look at themselves.

“They all need to do the right thing and sometimes FIFA don’t know when to do the right thing,” said Mr O’Brien, who watched the match in Haiti.

He said the performance of the Irish team was probably one of the best performances of an Irish team in 10 or 15 years.

“The manager was brilliant, the FAI were brilliant,” he said.

Mr O’Brien, who was speaking in Cork at a fundraising lunch for the Haitian charity Haven yesterday, said the upcoming budget is the most important in the history of the state.

He said he had no advice for the Government in the run-up to the budget but said people will be relieved when we get through the budgetary process.

“Obviously people are very concerned in terms of social welfare payments, children’s allowance, taxation, all those issues.

The sooner the budget happens the better and I’m sure the minister wants it to happen as quickly as possible,” he added.

He said he will continue to invest in Ireland as the country has a “brilliant future”.

“The recovery will probably happen next year. There has been a correction.

“There’s no point in whining about where we are at the moment. We need to move forward. We need to be forward looking instead of looking back. We should not get into the blame game.

“We need to get away from the public and private sector debate and move to the next stage,” he said.