Sport Ireland is “quite confident” that the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) is “well and truly on the road to recovery”, the Dáil’s public spending watchdog has been told.
The FAI was hit by controversy over its finances and governance during the tenure of former chief executive John Delaney.
It subsequently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Government which required the sport organisation to bring in reforms linked to State funding.
Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe asked Sport Ireland chief executive Dr Úna May about the FAI during a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee on Thursday.
Ms May said the FAI had been tasked with adopting 163 recommendations in the course of its MOU and Sport Ireland has been monitoring implementation.
She said there has been “very significant progress” and the recommendations are “90 per cent complete at this stage ... So we’re quite confident that they’re well and truly on the road to recovery.”
Asked about the FAI’s financial security Ms May said it “had a very challenging time” and many of the recommendations “related to the financial procedures” but she added: “we are confident that they’re making their way through [them]”.
The committee was later told that the FAI has recently told Sport Ireland that they’ve reduced their loans by €20 million and their current liability in terms of loans is €44 million.
Sport Ireland told the PAC that it is not a regulatory body but rather a development agency that also promotes the adoption of a Governance Code for Sport.
Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy raised concern over the “reputational damage” that can be done to sport if there are governance issues.
She asked an official from the Department of Sport if there is recognition there that there is a “regulatory gap” and what is being done about it.
Cian Ó Lionáin, an assistant secretary at the Department, said “the immediate priority is the successful roll-out of the governance code” and this is an “important step in trying to improve how sports operate.”
Ms Murphy suggested that “self-regulation sometimes doesn’t cut the mustard”.
Mr Ó Lionáin said Department’s view is “we need to get into a position where there is already a strong self-regulation culture and then you can assess where enforcement gaps may or may not be.”
Ms May agreed with the importance of avoiding reputational damage.
She said Sport Ireland reviews governing bodies’ financial statements and also audit implementation of the governance code.
Ms May said: “We aren’t waiting for a scandal to happen before we actually address these things which is why we have such a heavy load on our audit programme.”
Mr McAuliffe also asked about issues that have arisen at the Irish Athletic Boxing Association (IABA) in recent years.
Ms May said that boxing has “made a lot of very good progress”, there is a new chairperson and interim chief executive “who’s been working very closely with us in ensuring that all the key governance issues and recommendations are being adopted.
“So we’re comfortable that they’re in a much better place.
Mr McAuliffe said some “key talent” has left the high performance unit and he referred to the departure of Bernard Dunne, the unit’s former director.
Ms May said it was important that she did not go into “the level of personal information about individuals and their movements”.
She said: “The important thing from our point of view is that we’ve ensured that we’ve protected high performance system, that boxing have their high performance location within the Sport Ireland Institute.”
She said: “Our boxers are very well looked after ... And they will be heading shortly in the next week or two to the European Games which is a major Olympic qualifier and we look forward to great success at that.”
