The Football Association of Ireland intends to achieve 40 per cent female representation on their board by January 2024 to ensure full access to Government grants.
However, a master plan to increase the number of female directors from two to five will be revealed at a “future meeting.”
The FAI AGM in the Mansion House began with an “explanatory note” about the association’s difficulty in meeting the target of five females on the board by 2023. Currently, the 12-strong board includes two females, Liz Joyce and Catherine Guy, neither of whom have a sporting background.
Noting that “concerted action” is needed to increase the number by three, the FAI conceded that they have yet to make “sufficient progress” for “a number of reasons.”
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“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.
In the meantime, 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 FAI board.
The women’s strategic football committee, formed in July 2021, has never met while four committees also formed 12 months ago — the audit, risk, compliance and finance committee, the executive performance and remuneration committee, the governance committee and mominations committee — have convened on 31 occasions.
“The women’s strategic committee will be meeting at the start of September,” said FAI chief executive Jonathan Hill. “It is now fully staffed.”
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Under chairwoman Sally Horrox, who works full-time for World Rugby, the eight-person committee includes former FAI lawyer Ruth Fahy and ex-board member Ursula Scully.
The complete lack of gender balance across FAI committees became a central issue as soon as formal speeches by Dublin Lord Mayor Alison Gilliland, Fifa’s Heidi Beha from Fifa, Uefa’s Josef Kliment and McAnaney were completed. Noting all three representatives from the women’s national league are men, another former board member Dave Moran asked what is being done to address such a glaring gender imbalance across the association.
“This is something we’ve known about for the last two years and we have done nothing about it,” said Moran. “We lost a woman (Scully) on the board last year and it was an absolute disgrace that we lost that woman.”
Roy Barrett, the FAI board chairman, responded: “Gender balance on the board and on various committees is something we want to improve throughout the game. But it has to start somewhere. You will see from the explanatory note, our objective as a board over the next 18 months 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.
“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 assembly who accept or reject proposals that the board will be making to the assembly over the next number of months.
“But you are right, David,” Barrett continued, “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.”
After several delegates expressed anger with the board’s late change to the ratification of directors, the chairman repeatedly apologised.
“We just need more time to get it right,” said Barrett.
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In response to several delegates severely criticising the nomination of six men for honorary life membership, McAnaney replied that nominations come from the general assembly membership.
Meanwhile, there were no queries from the floor after Grant Thornton and finance director Alex O’Connell presented accounts for 2021, noting an ongoing debt of €63.5 million but a €6.7 million surplus.
“As of the 31st of December 2021 we have moved from a net liability position previously of €4 million in 2020 to a net asset position of €2.7 million,” said O’Connell. “In simple terms, this means what we own is greater than what we owe.”
On the two year absence of a primary shirt sponsor for the men’s senior team, Hill revealed that conversations with brands are “particularly advanced.”
