Outwardly, the FAI in 2023 looks nothing like the FAI in 2019. Different personnel, with an entirely new senior management on and off the pitch, embracing a communication strategy of engagement over stonewalling.
Less meditation on crisis, more focus on reputational repair. The rebrand to “Ireland Football,” with its large shamrock crest, was followed by a Roy Barrett interview when the outgoing chairman of the board emphasised strides towards “a more honest organisation”.
“More questions than answers,” observed Gareth Farrelly on Twitter. “Direct recommendation falls well short of [an] independent, transparent recruitment process.”
Farrelly, who won six caps for the Republic of Ireland in the late 1990s before reinventing himself as a commercial litigator, is critical of the fact that Barrett’s appointment as chairman in January 2020 went outside an established recruitment process.
None of this is a secret. Barrett confirmed that Patrick Kennedy, the governor of the Bank of Ireland, recommended him to the “head hunters” Amrop, who agreed that the current chairman of Sherry Fitzgerald was the ideal person to streamline the FAI in a post-John Delaney era.
Barrett immediately negotiated a loan agreement with the same bank and Uefa, as part of the government rescue package amounting to €30 million over four years, which leaves a “manageable” debt of €63.5 million.
“I did ring Patrick when I first met [Amrop] to say ‘Jaysus Patrick, what did I ever do to you, you’ve put me forward for this?!’ I talked to him for about five minutes. But then you get all this suspicion.”
Farrelly, speaking this week to The Irish Times, takes issue with the methods used to appoint Barrett and the association’s current refusal to reveal the terms of the Castore kit agreement beyond calling it the “biggest commercial deal, by a distance” that the FAI has ever secured.
Eighty-two people applied for the role of FAI chairman and it effectively disrespected all of them, as they thought they were participating in a serious process
“If you organise a public recruitment process and you ask qualified people to apply but then appoint somebody from outside that process you can’t then advocate for good governance, honesty and transparency,” said Farrelly.
“Eighty-two people applied for the role of FAI chairman and it effectively disrespected all of them, as they thought they were participating in a serious process.”
Barrett was approached by Amrop.
When it was put to Farrelly that private and public opinions of people working inside the FAI have described Barrett’s three-year tenure as progressive, the former Bolton Wanderers midfielder reiterated his view.
“This is not about personalities for me, or individuals, it is about the process,” he said. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Saying ‘that is how Ireland works’ doesn’t justify any of that.”
Can Barrett’s appointment be reasonably filed under ‘an Irish solution to an Irish problem?’
“But that totally contradicts the whole point about what the objective was supposedly. If that is how things have happened in the past, that caused this particular issue, and in order to demonstrate competency, transparency and integrity you are moving away from that process, but that very same process is happening again – how can you justify that?”
Does Barrett’s three years in charge of the FAI board not justify the means of his appointment?
“Who is to say if the recruitment process had taken place properly that the person appointed would not have been better?
“Secondly, the FAI has a really poor record of financial disclosure over the last 20 years, which essentially covered up poor management which led to its near collapse,” Farrelly continued.
“Multiple bailouts were needed. The new FAI should have an obligation to engage in a much higher level of financial disclosure to its stakeholders.
“Look at the Castore deal: it is perfectly in order for stakeholders to know what was paid. This is important information when evaluating cash flow in the future and evaluating the FAI’s current commercial team.”
More questions than answers.
“The media has a role to play in holding these people to account but how can you hold the FAI board and senior management to account without that information?” asks Farrelly (47).
“We have a situation where somebody is advocating transparency, integrity and governance, but where is the credibility behind this? Corporate Ireland obviously sees it very much the same way.”
Barrett stressed that the FAI are unveiling new sponsors throughout 2023 but Farrelly struggles to see light at the end of the Irish football tunnel, even as positive conversations simmer around decrepit facilities, funding League of Ireland academies and, one day, a football industry on the island.
“We’ve been having these conversations since the 1990s.”
