Gender imbalance leaves FAI facing 50% cut in Government funding

The Football Association of Ireland’s chairman, president and chief executive spent most of the centenary agm apologising and promising to find a way to avoid a 50 per cent cut in Government funding.

The December 2023 deadline to establish 40 per cent female representation among the 12-strong board of directors is looming. At present, the board includes two women, Liz Joyce and Catherine Guy.

“As a board, we have decided it is the right thing to do,” said FAI chairman Roy Barrett when asked if any male directors are willing to step aside. “You have asked the right question — collectively everybody agrees it is the right thing to do but who is going to do what? I will talk to each of the board members to understand their position.

“If it was the right thing to do for the organisation, I would be more than happy to step down as chairperson if there was a female chairperson,” said Barrett, the former Goodbody Stockbrokers’ managing director. “I think every board member should have that attitude. If we make a decision collectively and we want to do something it is not about the personalities of the individuals it is about the collective good. That’s how I am approaching it and that is how I would hope and expect the rest of the board to look at it.”

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Times have changed. In 2017 Philip Browne and John Delaney went before the Oireachtas. The chief executives of the IRFU and the FAI warned politicians to avoid the “tokenism” which would occur by forcing gender quotas on major sporting organisations.

“Female rugby is in its infancy,” said Browne three years after Ireland reached a World Cup semi-final. “And it will be difficult to find suitably qualified female candidates with the accumulated rugby wisdom and skill set to fill such quotas without retreating to tokenism. Such activity would be the very antithesis of good governance.”

Delaney readily supported Browne’s stance — “I do not see the requirement for gender quotas” — so long as the FAI is “developing the game correctly.”

Three more women

Five years on and the clock is ticking for the FAI, IRFU and GAA to keep millions of euros in Government funding flowing into their coffers with the football association needing to bring in three more women, while also convincing three men to step aside to avoid severe financial penalties.

“It could be up to 50 per cent for organisations that don’t meet it and I think a range within that,” said Minister of State for Sport Jack Chambers in May. “So, for example, if there are organisations that are very close, it could be closer to 10 per cent.”

The FAI is not very close. The issue of representation dominated the board’s interaction with 107 delegates in the Mansion House on Saturday afternoon. Even the nomination of six men for lifetime membership sparked angry reactions from the floor inside the Round Room.

Barrett apologised on numerous occasions for postponing the ratification of the current directors, information that was only relayed to delegates at 5.30pm on Friday evening.

Despite a €63.5 million debt requiring annual repayments of €1.4 million, Robbie Keane’s contract, and a raft of senior management positions being filled by chief executive Jonathan Hill, the event centred on how the FAI plans to turn 10 male board members into seven.

Detailed plans to unearth and promote three women to the board are due by October.

“Our objective over the next 18 months [is] we want to achieve gender balance within the board, as ratified by the general assembly, which we hope all the rest of the game, the associations and clubs, will take heed of,” said Barrett. “We want to encourage more females to come into our game and that has to start somewhere, and it starts at the top and the top is the [general] assembly who accept or reject proposals that the board will be making over the next number of months.

“There are some inconsistencies but there have been inconsistencies for years and years and years, and we want to address it but we want to address it in a reasonable, collaborative and positive way.

“We just need more time to get it right.”

As a result, the ratification of directors was adjourned for three months, which means that “retiring directors” Packie Bonner, Dick Shakespeare, Gary Twohig, Tom Browne and Robert Watt will remain on the board. Watt, the secretary general at the Department of Health, and fellow board member John Finnegan were unable to attend the agm due to family events.

“We have to persuade members to nominate women to these positions and we need men to make space for women to take these positions,” said FAI president Gerry McAnaney.

Perhaps the solution is hiding in plain sight. Hill announced that the women’s strategic committee, formed 12 months ago, is “fully staffed” and will finally convene in September. Under chairwoman Sally Horrox, who works full-time for World Rugby, the eight-person committee — six women and two men — includes former FAI lawyer Ruth Fahy and ex-board member Ursula Scully with a player representative still to be chosen.

Hill said the search for a primary shirt sponsor is “particularly advanced” and confirmed that Ireland will play two friendlies in November, home and away, against other European countries that failed to qualify for the World Cup, with ticket pricing to be set to sell out the Aviva stadium.

FAI staff reaction

Despite an overhaul of senior staff, historical issues remain in Abbotstown. An audit of staff culture within the association last March produced results that “weren’t great”.

“One of the things we heard back was the desire from staff simply to be treated with a degree of respect in terms of having the basics to do their job,” said Hill. “A lot of this stuff comes from things that happened historically that we are dealing with now. But we want to get it right.”

Finally, Hill confirmed that Keane’s coaching contract, worth €250,000 annually, ends on July 31st. Ireland’s record goal scorer was part of Mick McCarthy’s management team, but Stephen Kenny recruited Damien Duff as coach when he replaced McCarthy in April 2020.

“Robbie has a unique relationship with Uefa which can be and should be very valuable to the FAI moving forward. He also clearly has a very unique relationship with the history of Irish football and with the fans. I would hope when we get to the point and the contract is finished, we all take a deep breath and can have a conversation about how our interaction with Robbie will look moving forward.”