FAI chief constructed ‘fabricated narrative’ around his secret extra €12k pay, claims PAC
THE chief executive of the FAI has been accused of constructing a ‘fabricated narrative’ around how he received €12,000 in secret payments.
CEO Jonathan Hill and other FAI executives were hauled before the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee yesterday amid concerns over transparency, governance and misappropriation of funds at the association.
Government funding was suspended from the FAI in November after it was discovered payments to Mr Hill breached the terms of the State bailout to the organisation. Mr Hill’s pay is linked to that of a departmental secretary general on €258,000, and must not exceed it, but a €12,000 payment made to the CEO in lieu of holidays he did not take breached the Government-imposed rules.
The payment, as well as an additional €8,000 in expenses, were discovered in an audit by KOSI on behalf of Sport Ireland.
Mr Hill told Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe yesterday that when he agreed to a request from a junior colleague to be paid in lieu of holidays they could not take due to an ‘exceptional circumstance’, he replied to the email saying:
‘It’s good you didn’t ask for a private jet’
‘Can you negotiate the same for me please?!’ The FAI’s former chief financial officer Alex O’Connell and chief operations officer David Courrell were copied in the email.
Mr Hill said it was a ‘throwaway line’ and arising from that email a process he was unaware of was initiated, and he was paid €12,000 for leave he did not take.
‘From then on, I am not part of that process, although I am asked five weeks later, as would be normal at the end of the year, how many days holiday I’ve taken. I reply and ask what is happening with them, saying clearly that I would be happy to carry them over,’ Mr Hill said.
Mr McAuliffe told Mr Hill that there was a ‘credibility issue’ and that ‘it’s very clear the request for holiday pay came from yourself’.
The TD said: ‘It’s an extraordinary situation that an organisation would somehow in a train of emails, pick up on what is a throwaway line, that they would then initiate a process to cost that organisation money. That, without any recourse to you, they would build a case that meant it was exceptional and unusual that you should receive this, in breach of your own organisation’s HR guidelines, in breach of what is best practice in terms of employee relations, in breach of perhaps legislation, that they would do all of that on their own, and that you had no part in any of that. That they did all of that on their own.’ Mr Hill replied: ‘I understand your position, I understand your statement, but that is the situation.’ Crucially, the email in question was provided to the committee in a fully redacted form, meaning TDs could not interrogate it for themselves. Mr Hill said this was done to protect the identity of the junior staff member, but this received sharp criticism from the committee chair, Sinn Féin TD Brian Stanley, who said it could have been partially redacted.
Fianna Fáil TD Cormac Devlin told Mr Hill: ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t ask for a private jet, given whatever you ask for seems to materialise.’ Fine Gael TD Alan Dillon asked Mr Hill how he found it acceptable in his ‘fabricated narrative’ to suggest he ‘did not request payment for unused holidays?’ When pressed by Mr McAuliffe if he had confidence in Mr Hill, FAI president Paul Cooke said he has confidence in the senior leadership team and the board.
When pressed further, he added: ‘My confidence has certainly... been challenged by the events.’
A Government source told the Irish Daily Mail they were ‘gobsmacked’ by the lack of unity displayed at the committee by the FAI. Documents were only provided to the Oireachtas members an hour before the committee started, something Mr Dillon described as a ‘strategy of containment’. Mr McAullife said: ‘There’s
‘Put yourself in a suspicious position’
a long-running tradition… Organisations that provide their documents late, often we go on to find out that there’s information being hidden from this committee. You’ve put yourself in a suspicious position.’
In December, Mr Hill told another Oireachtas committee he ‘never contemplated the possibility of asking for cash in respect of holiday payments’ but that it arose ‘as part of that conversation regarding the other employee involved’. ‘I did not push it and I was not asking for it,’ he said.