Roy Barrett criticises €1.5bn State funding of horse and greyhound racing

Roy Barrett offers a silver bullet: increase the tax on gambling and use that money to recreate Irish football’s “grossly inadequate” facilities.

The outgoing FAI chairperson has criticised the funding of sport by successive Governments, particularly a 2 per cent betting levy that ploughed “€1.5 billion” into horse and greyhound racing since 2001.

“Over 60 per cent of [the betting levy] is in prize money for a sport which, let’s just say, isn’t growing and some could argue is in decline,” said Barrett. “Then, if there’s €1.5 billion of betting levies being raised, well, what are they raised on?

“You take the UK gambling commission, they did a survey on bets from 2017 to 2020 and 60 per cent of bets are on football. Now maybe you can argue there’s a local difference in Ireland and say 40 per cent are on football. Why should 40 per cent of the bets and levies that are applied to that go exclusively to horse racing and greyhound racing? I just cannot get my head around that.

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“Do I think football, given all of the benefits that accrue from it, should receive equal funding as greyhound racing and horse racing? Yes, I do. Do I think the betting tax levy going exclusively to those two sports is right? No, I don’t. And do I think sport in general, and football in particular, should in time benefit from those levies, and would that be a better thing societally, from a health perspective and community perspective? Unambiguously.”

Barrett was answering a question about the optics of seeking infrastructural funding from a Government that bailed out the FAI with a €19.2 million rescue package in January 2020, just as the former Goodbody Stockbrokers managing director became chairman of the board.

“I would have hoped for the sport that something like this would have been addressed a couple of years ago. We’ve a betting levy of 2 per cent. Increase it to 3 per cent and let other sports, not just football, benefit from it. Government needs to invest in sport. Here’s one way of doing it.”

Barrett also highlighted grants received by the FAI’s rival sporting bodies, the GAA and the IRFU.

“Since 2000, and we can argue whether it is right or wrong, but the fact is that the GAA have got about €430 million in government grants, football has got €118 million, rugby has got €57 million.

“If you look at that per club, [the] GAA has got €208,000 per club, rugby €280,000 per club, and football less than €100,000 per club. We have 1,200 different [soccer] clubs, the facilities are grossly inadequate for where we are and where we are going.”

Gender imbalance

Barrett’s reopening of the betting levies argument served to reduce focus on the FAI’s gender imbalance, which apparently led to his resignation.

“I would be more than happy to step down as chairperson if there was a female chairperson,” he said at the FAI annual general meeting last July. “I think every board member should have that attitude.”

But it turns out only Dick Shakespeare, the Dublin City Council assistant chief executive, and independent director Gary Twohig publicly agreed. Former Cork City director Niamh O’Mahony is replacing Shakespeare with two more female appointments expected, alongside independent directors Liz Joyce and Catherine Guy to secure the 40 per cent quota by 2024.

“I don’t believe the people in my type of role should stay for a long time,” said Barrett. “When you look at something like the FAI and the relatively tumultuous time it has come through and all that has happened I am happy now where things have got to. New blood with new ideas is a good thing, in my view. It just so happens that it coincides with the requirement in terms of gender balance. Why I am doing it now is it affords the association time to find a suitable replacement and to do so in an orderly way.”

On reputational damage sustained by the FAI during John Delaney’s 15 years as chief executive, Barrett revealed just how challenging his three years as chairman has proved.

“Let’s just accept it was coming from an extraordinarily low base … there was massive damage done. And I don’t think that has gone away, people are still sceptical and will look at the history of it and ask, can that happen again?”