The Irish Times view on the FAI: the game is up

With no warning, a chief executive is informed that the organisation he runs – a national sporting body with a turnover of €50 million – is about to run out of cash. He responds by writing a personal cheque for €100,000. The sum is repaid two months later but is never recorded as a note with the accounts. Two years later, when a newspaper learns of the transaction, the chief executive goes to court to seek an injunction to prevent the information being disclosed. When that fails, the organisation moves into damage limitation mode.

It issues a statement to say the board – a board, incidentally, with no independent members and five seats occupied by the same people for more than 13 years – was fully aware of the transaction at the time, but then retracts that a week later. In fact only three members were aware.

With controversy raging, it is suddenly announced that the long-serving chief executive is being moved – not out of the organisation but into the newly-created senior position of executive vice-president, in which he will retain the most interesting and high-profile parts of his role, including major projects and international relations. When a parliamentary committee calls a hearing, the executive vice-president announces he will only take questions about his new role.

The FAI never seems comfortable with public scrutiny. Who could blame it, if this is what public scrutiny reveals. If the saga of the €100,000 loan from John Delaney has provided one telling glimpse of the dysfunction of the organisation, the performance of its most senior figures at the Oireachtas sport committee on Wednesday gave us another. The session will be remembered for Delaney's day-long silence – one he justified on the specious grounds that members have previously said critical things about him and with puzzling (and, on its face, equally specious) reference to the Supreme Court's recent decision on a case that raised entirely separate issues to this one.

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An Oireachtas committee is a poor forum for investigation. Ruth Coppinger was among few exceptions to the general rule that TDs and Senators are not very good at asking the succinct, focused questions that produce useful answers. Several members were unprepared. But that does not excuse the FAI’s evasiveness. “On legal advice I am precluded,” said Delaney of his silence. One cannot be precluded by advice, legal or otherwise. He chose not to speak, and that choice was an insult to the committee and the taxpayers it represents.

The farce that played out in Leinster House should be the final, ignominious act of the current leadership of the FAI. They have fallen short of the most basic standards of corporate governance and accountability. They are holding back the organisation and putting a brake on the progress of Irish soccer. New leadership cannot come soon enough.