Minutes not available

The Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) yesterday declined to make the minutes of a controversial meeting held in 1989 available for scrutiny.

The OCI general meeting in the Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin, on March 9th, 1989, changed the voting structures in the organisation which gave over 30 per cent of the entire membership vote to the executive members. The OCI has subsequently been heavily criticised, most notably by presidental candidate Richard Burrows, as being "anti democratic" and "lacking transparency."

At the launch of his campaign in Dublin last week incumbent OCI president Pat Hickey was asked by The Irish Times, the Sunday Times and the Irish Examiner to make the minutes of that meeting available for reasons of transparency and clarification.

"I wouldn't see any problem with that," replied Hickey.

When explicitly asked if that was yes, the minutes would be available, or, no they would not be available, Hickey said: "I'll go back and check what the legalities are and I'll get advice from the solicitors and if it's (the minutes) available and they say yes, no problem."

On Friday an OCI spokesman told The Irish Times and the two other papers concerned that the minutes would certainly be available on Monday of this week.

Yesterday, however, the spokesman said that having spoken to their solicitors Arthur Cox, the minutes can only be made available to national sports federations who are affiliated to the OCI (a limited company) and that The Irish Times would not be allowed to look at them for reasons of clarification.

The OCI spokesman declined to say whether the OCI had informed their solicitors that they were agreeable that the minutes should be made public, as Hickey had said. Opinion given to The Irish Times is that if all parties agree to make the minutes available, there is nothing preventing them from doing so.

Because the OCI appears to be back-tracking on the issue, attention on the contents of the minutes and why the organisation does not wish to make them public is likely only to increase.