Delaney spent almost €40k in six months on FAI credit card

JOHN Delaney spent almost €40,000 on his work credit card in the last six months of 2016, it has emerged.

While Mr Delaney was on a salary of €360,000 as chief executive, he used the FAI credit card to pay for duty-free purchases at airports, meals in his local pub in Wicklow and to make cash withdrawals of more than €6,000 in six months.

Purchases on Mr Delaney’s FAI credit card included €400 at a Hilfiger store, more than €500 on two visits to an executive dry-cleaning service and a €226 bill from Thomas Pink, a store that claims to have perfected ‘the traditions and intuition of English shirt making’.

The FAI declined to comment on Mr Delaney’s credit card expenses, and about a separate €60,000 payment made by the association in early 2014 to a third party labelled as ‘professional fees’.

The Sunday Times yesterday reported that on top of Mr Delaney’s company credit card expenses, the FAI paid a bill of €8,018 in December 2015 to cover his stay at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in New York, where guests choose pillows from a menu.

As director of Waterford Football Club in 2001, Mr Delaney called on then FAI chief executive Bernard O’Byrne to stand down pending a review of his use of an FAI credit card. Mr O’Byrne subsequently accepted an exit package amid allegations that he used the card for personal spending. Mr O’Byrne, who repaid the sums in question, blamed the issue on an ‘administrative error’.

Mr Delaney also used the card to spend €66.74 in Michael Healy-Rae’s Mace shop and garage in Kilgarvan, Co. Kerry. Last week the Kerry TD spoke in Mr Delaney’s defence at an Oireachtas hearing into the FAI’s corporate governance.