WHY DID THE FAI NEED €100K LOAN FROM ITS OWN CEO?
Confusion as sport body confirms it got sum from John Delaney ... yet its accounts reveal no specific mention of the transactions
THE Football Association of Ireland’s own accounts don’t appear to contain any reference to a €100,000 ‘bridging loan’ the sport body received from its chief executive, John Delaney.
Furthermore, the loan was not mentioned when the accounts were publicly released last August.
Mr Delaney, who earns a salary of €360,000, wrote a personal cheque for €100,000 to the FAI on April 25, 2017, and the money was subsequently paid back
to Mr Delaney on June 16, 2017.
Following the revelations, which he tried to stop through a court order, Mr Delaney released a statement at the weekend saying the payment was a ‘bridging loan’ used as a short-term measure to solve a cash-flow issue.
‘I am aware of stories circulating around this loan dating back to 2017. I confirm that I made a once-off bridging loan to the association to aid a very short-term cash-flow issue. This is the only occasion on which I provided the association with a short-term loan,’ he said.
Published accounts show the FAI had a surplus of €2.7million in 2017.
There is a reference to short-term ‘Other Creditor Grants’ of €108,690 in 2017, which is separate from the organisation’s bank loans. The
‘Matters of public interest’
creditor grants are standard in its accounts and were up from €101,911 in ‘Other Creditor Grants’ in 2016.
The Irish Daily Mail found that in the same year that Mr Delaney gave his loan, the FAI had international match income of €17.3million; commercial income of €16.9million; grants and subvention of €6.1million; income from courses of €6.1million and other income of €2.4million.
It said that value of sponsorship, which also ran into the millions, was not included in the overall figure.
In 2017, the organisation also received millions in government grants, including €2.7million from Sport Ireland and a Football In The Community grant of €361,000.
Mr Delaney attempted to secure an emergency injunction preventing The Sunday Times publishing details of the €100,000 loan late on Saturday night. He had argued that as the documents detailing the transactions came to light as a result of an in-camera family law case involving his ex-wife, they should not be placed in the public domain.
However, the judge ruled that there was a clear public interest in publishing the material. ‘I am satisfied that the finances of the FAI and any payment and repayment to its chief executive are matters of significant public interest,’ the judge ruled.
Mr Delaney last night attended the FAI Awards at RTÉ Studios in Dublin, opting to enter through a side door.
In a press release yesterday evening, he said: ‘As CEO, I hold regular meetings with our director of finance regarding the state of our finances and all items arising are conveyed to our board at our monthly meetings. This was the case in 2017 when I acted in good faith for the benefit of the FAI and will continue to do so.’
However, the FAI declined to elaborate when asked by the Mail why the loan didn’t appear to be specifically mentioned in the annual accounts.
Minister for Sport Shane Ross declined to say whether he was concerned by the revelations.