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LAST UPDATE | 30 Jan 2020
A REFINANCING ARRANGEMENT for the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) involving Bank of Ireland, the government and Uefa has been announced.
The FAI is currently saddled with debts of around €62 million and in need of an injection of around €18 million to remain solvent.
Minister Shane Ross said following a meeting today that they will be restoring Sport Ireland funding for football development programmes of €2.9 million annually, doubling this amount to €5.8 million each year from 2020 to 2023.
“€800,000 of that funding will support programmes that underpin the development of the men’s and women’s national leagues,” he said.
“We will also provide an interest-free loan of €2.5 million each year from 2020-2022. This is to safeguard our interest in the Aviva Stadium – where Ireland is hosting four games in the upcoming Euro 2020 Championships. This finance will be payable directly to the stadium operations company, and will be repayable from 2024 onwards.”
He said that: “All of these measures, taken together, will ensure that Irish football has a secure future.”
It means that the staff, players, coaches, volunteers, the schoolboy and girls clubs and the League of Ireland can feel reassured that we have their back and are supporting them to a brighter future. There will be no programmes of compulsory redundancies.
Ross described the news as a “new dawn for Irish football”. He said that it has been a “difficult journey to get to this place, where we can finally heave a sigh of relief knowing that Irish football has a secure future”.
Ross said that:
“We can now look forward to a rigorous rebuilding of the FAI from a toxic, autocratic, unfit-for-purpose organisation to a fresh, cleansed association that can honourably represent and support Irish football, at home and also on the world stage.”
The financial assistance is “absolutely conditional” on the reforms being implemented, said Ross.
Among the conditions are that former FAI Board members are not allowed to be appointed to any FAI Board Committees (former Board member John Earley was recently appointed to the FAI’s High-Performance Committee); that the number of independent directors on the 12-person FAI Board be increased from four to six; that all low to middle-income FAI employees are insulated from mandatory redundancy for 18 months; and that the remuneration of the CEO is kept in line with the government’s pay guidelines.
Earlier this month, FAI chairperson Roy Barrett met with Uefa, Sports Minister Shane Ross and Bank of Ireland in order to secure a financing package to keep the Association afloat.
A Uefa delegation also met with Minister Ross and Bank of Ireland’s – the FAI’s main creditor – in recent weeks to discuss the financial crisis at the Association.
With reporting by Gavin Cooney and Aoife Barry
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More taxpayer funded bailouts for ffg buddies while Delaney walks away with over 400k and we go to jail for non payment tv licence fee to fund Ryan turbidys €1:50 steak dinners in Rte
@Tom o brien: shane ross calls us tollrats but we are always good for his bailouts thecheek of him
@Tom o brien: We have to take resonsibility also. We are the one who vote td to DAIL . On 8 Feb we will have opp to tell them that we want DAIL back in control of that creaking public fund being propped up now by pensions fund and holding loan fund that they say is for MIN TO SPEND FROM SUBJECT TO THE TERMS OF THE DEAL MADE BY LENIHAN WITH EU AND IMF and the min is going to take money out to FAI.
It is TD who made decison giving control to MIN .
We elect TD
Tme pe reall stat telling td cos u wonder about housing ??
@mr lanister: That’s because Soccer is the dominant sport by a mile in Dublin, where the government are trying hard to hold onto the seats they have. It’s no coincidence that this is announced in the last 9 days of the election.
@Marcus Mac An Bhaird: as in match seats! !
My tax money better not be funding this!!
@Lydia McLoughlin: considering governmet funding is restored your taxes are funding this
@Lydia McLoughlin: or………?
It’s not Irish football, why do people keep saying this. It’s Irish soccer
@maurice kavanagh: “Unqualified, the word football normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used”
I’d be fine with this if they’d just throw Delaney in jail
Good news, and the only option open to government.
Irelands most participated in sport deserves multiples of this bailout.
In time this past few months will be seen as the best thing to happen Irish football.
@Eamonn Duggan: This is the only sensible comment I’ve seen on this article.
@Eamonn Duggan: Gaelic is the most participated sport and if a Bailout was agreed the former directors and CEO should have been arrested on fraud offences first
@David Garland: All four Gaelic sports combined are marginally more participated in, but association football is the single sport with the highest participation by a distance
@Eamonn Duggan: a new beginning great news for soccer
@David Glynn: all these development coaches and the sessions they run are funded by both the FAI and LDCs (currently totally funded by LDC). LDCs are government funded. People like you seem to ignore this significant funding and all the grants given to local clubs in you arguments in favour of the rotten FAI. The FAI is hardly reformed when it’s president was on the council for 20 years not holding Delaney and co to account
@John Buckley: A.ll of them gone now. I just disagree with you on future funding. Anyway, its going ahead
@David Glynn: they are not all gone. Most of the council is still there and they are meant to be the ones who hold to the board to account. The president lost to the army place on the council but his buddies got him the football for all place so he would be eligible for the election – that stinks. John Earley finally stepped down from the board last month and his buddies gave him a position on the high-performance committee last week – that stinks. It is still a cesspool and needs a proper clear out.
Looks like Delaney’s pension pot is safe
fGFF our out out
This decision should be left until the next government takes power, just in case it involves Electronic voting
You’d nearly think there was an election around the corner
Absolutely disgraceful behaviour by Ross and the government, bailing out a useless corrupt organization using the pretence of keeping the grassroots organisation alive to promote healthy pastimes.
If they were serious about that the money available would be distributed between the Athletic organisations, GAA and Rugby, because anything given to FAI will be squandered or pushed down back pockets.
@Liam Mernagh: In this case it kind of had to happen, what is done is done with the FAI and unfortunately with the law being the way it is, nobody will have to pay the price for it. However I’m at least a little bit hopeful it can be better run going forward.
@Aidan: I hope you’re right Aidan, but I remain to be convinced, the culture of FAI is such that they don’t understand or care about good governance and that also applies to UEFA and FIFA. Cast your mind back to when Ireland was doing well under Jack & the tickets scandal with Nick the Greek and then Blatter and his governance of FIFA, culture it’s all about culture.
So they stop public funding of 2.9m per year because of all the shenanigans going on and then reverse course and not only restore that but double it to €5.8m and give interest free loans of €2.5m per year for the next 3 years.. call it what you want Mr. Ross but it’s high time you were on your bike!! Crisis after crisis in this country unresolved and you put public funds into a rotten organisation that was basically a little boys club with jobs for the lads and massive pay offs! Can’t wait till I get my day in the election!
Tax payers money being squandered
It’s not Government money
Disgraceful waste of public taxpayer s money.
FG not getting anything from me on 8th February.
This isn’t refinancing this is a government bailout for an organisation that has not even begun to make real changes in how its governed.
Complete joke this has happened but what else do you expect from FG
Bailout….
Tax payers money….
Etc, etc, etc…..
How much money have the government (councils) milked from schoolboy and schoolgirl football since they started charging the kids to play football in public parks?
Give me a break with your whinging…..
And the Election is when?????
The mint is going to be the new FAI HQ
Government making sure of a good few votes on February 8th.
“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”
This is extract from B Lenihan statement to Dail on AG advises and well intended.
But when PRSI Fund in pipeline to prop up creaking public fund under terms of deal that Taoisach later also decided did not req dail approval
and
TD did not object on behalf of DAIL accountable to us
AND
coming with mandate that promise are when we get into govt ..
time for people to start telling TD that NOT acceptable at all and that DAIL start flexing muscles cos no clarity of promise until it does take back control of that fund and that TD job. Under art 28 4 of constitution the govt is accountable to Dail.
But TD not invoking Dail power they are elected to on our behalf who pay the bill .
You said there was no bail out. Delaney walked away. Redundancy happens! Been there.. Ross you’re a total disgrace..
That will teach them the doubling of funding and interest free loans, no word of course on deloitte the poor auditors who were mislead after 20 years of consulting and auditing!!
If I had a business in Ireland ,or a mortgage and ran into trouble for a few grand, the state and the banks would be all over me like a rash, yet again the government see fit to bail out the rich kids that squandered money. Shameless Delaney and his pals are pissing themselves knowing they will never be accountable as to where all the 62.000.000 euro went. Crooks
Ane the Irish Tiddly-winks Federation can get on with its business entirely without a government subvention.
@Tony Harris: I find that a silly ruling when English FA/ Scottish FA and IFA all members of UEFA. It is like saying a person cant cross the border to work of they are under 18. All football clubs have responsible households veted to take under 18s in digs… it’s not as if they will be fending for themselves.
I hope this is the last we might see of lord Ross
Just in time for the election. But he got it done and his name is all over it. Played it very well in fairness.
have your say