Comment
The failure — to date — to meet the gender balance required risks State funding being halved next year, which would be a disaster for so many good people in the FAI, in clubs and in leagues
Published: 11:28, 18 Nov 2023
WHEN the FAI hit crisis mode in 2019, they started an AGM in July and ended it in December.
Last year’s one started in July and ended in January because the board members were still discussing how to implement the State-mandated gender quota.
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The FAI are marred in controversy over payments to Jonathan Hill
And the 2023 AGM has not started yet because solutions have yet to be accepted.
The governance review in 2019 on the back of the revelations about the John Delaney-led organisation stated: “The norms and ‘the way things are done’…significantly impinged on the association’s workings.”
Four years on and what is different now?
It is interesting reading then-FAI president Dónal Conway’s comments from that time about how attitudes rather than just people needed to change.
He said: “What I would worry about is that people will look at the review and think ‘OK’. But that really only is the board, the 12 people sitting around a table.
“If you’re changing just ten or 12 at the top, even with the power they have, I don’t think that is enough.”
The failure — to date — to meet the gender balance required risks State funding being halved next year, which would be a disaster for so many good people in the FAI, in clubs and in leagues.
That the Sport Ireland funding tap has been frozen because of governance issues around the payment of CEO Jonathan Hill is damaging to an association with a historic image problem.
But that it was not disclosed publicly before the EGM last week called to vote on gender quota proposals is damning of an association that got in trouble because of secrecy before.
The public news for that EGM was good.
In the 48 hours before it, the extension of SSE Airtricity’s sponsorship of the League of Ireland, the sale of 21,000 season tickets, that over 40,000 would attend the FAI Cup final and an increase in grassroots funding were all revealed.
Maybe I am being cynical to ask why there was a good news dump at that time.
But Senator Shane Cassells also wondered about timing when he revealed that the FAI pulled out of a planned appearance at a joint Oireachtas committee next week.
He said: “They decided they’re not coming next week — they can’t — maybe we would have discussed something else.”
To postpone a chance to showcase their facilities plan to an all-party panel makes little sense.
After all, the record FAI Cup final crowd is still fresh in the mind and stories like St Patrick’s Athletic having a waiting list for season tickets are whirling around.
But maybe the FAI have something better to do than plead for funding that would transform the sport in every TD’s constituency, or maybe it is something as mundane as staff having holiday days to take that cannot be bought back.
But when the Oireachtas meeting happens, you can be sure that those politicians present will not forget the postponement and recent governance issues.
Those are not going to blow over until they are addressed.
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