The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) will introduce a voluntary redundancy scheme in the coming days as they seek to reduce the current staff count of 230 by between 20-30 per cent. With compulsory redundancies also expected, the total number of job losses is likely to be between 40 and 70.
Informing staff in Abbotstown on Wednesday morning of the job cuts, the chief executive of the organisation, David Courell, said that a “significant” number of jobs would go.
The FAI aims to “modernise how football is developed and delivered in Ireland” by introducing “specialist skill sets” and attaining “financial sustainability”.
The association is managing a debt of €40 million, which has been reduced from €70 million in 2019 following a Government bailout.
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“Once [voluntary redundancies are] completed, the association will then assess progress against its long-term vision and move forward with a phase of redeployment before confirming the number of compulsory redundancies required,” read a FAI statement.
“The transformation programme is informed by extensive research, including Uefa benchmarking, and has been shaped with the benefit of external guidance from specialist consultancy firms.”
Last Sunday, trade union Siptu called for Minister for Sport Patrick O’Donovan to “urgently intervene” to avoid job loses in the FAI.
“Without a clear commitment to protecting jobs and community development, the very foundations of the game are at risk,” said Robbie Purfield, the Siptu sector organiser. “Football cannot be rebuilt from the top down, it must be supported from the ground up.”
In response to the voluntary redundancy scheme being rolled out this week, Siptu expressed its disappointment that the decision to make staff redundant had been taken.
“The FAI has shown utter contempt for its staff by outsourcing critical decisions about their futures to faceless consultants while failing to engage in any proper consultation process,” said Siptu’s Adrian Kane.
“The FAI has a duty to be transparent and accountable to its employees, yet it has kept them in the dark while threatening mass redundancies. Workers have a right to know what is happening to their livelihoods and how these decisions are being made.”
Purfield added: “Our members are disgusted by a statement released by the FAI today in which it refers to necessary ‘skill sets’ within the workforce. The question is: what are the necessary skill sets displayed by a CEO [Courell] who, in recent months, has lost many of his senior management team and now hires unnamed external consultants to draft a plan he has yet to reveal to workers? There are also many questions for the FAI board to answer.”
Since May the FAI’s legal and governance director Derry Coughlan, finance director Dan McCormack, the chief football officer Marc Canham and head of women’s and girls’ football Hannah Dingley have left the organisation.
“It would appear that grassroots football is set to bear the brunt of this attack,” Purfield continued, “whether it’s the night leagues that cater to youths in economically disadvantaged areas, or the Football for All schemes that provide opportunities for children with additional needs. These vital services should not suffer due to the failures of misguided FAI management.”
Funding Irish football has been an issue for successive FAI chief executives. Co-hosting Euro 2028 is expected to bring €25 million into the association and a potential financial lifeline of qualifying for next year’s World Cup in North America was emphasised this week by the men’s manager Heimir Hallgrímsson.
“If we qualify [for the 2026 World Cup] it’s going to change everything, so we can do more for the youth teams, for the League of Ireland, to free up money to invest in infrastructure,” said Hallgrímsson. “It’s going to change a lot financially.”
The association’s hope to secure €8 million in Government funding from next year’s budget for League of Ireland academies is also in doubt following an audit by external consultants Double Pass.
“There has been a shift in our own thinking, to be honest,” said Will Clarke, the FAI academy manager. “This is a long-term process. We are only going to get one chance to make a success of this so it is important that we do it correctly rather than quickly.”
In a presentation at the Aviva Stadium yesterday, Belgian company Double Pass revealed that a fifth-division club in Belgium have a better infrastructure than the leading Irish club, Shamrock Rovers.
“It is the same in other European environments, like Holland or Denmark,” said Hans Vander Elst, the senior partner from Double Pass.
“And the clubs are way too manager-driven. Managers of the first team are deciding everything. The connection with the academy, there is a big gap in a lot of clubs even when the academy manager and first team manager are sitting beside each other in the office. They don’t talk to each other.
“If they do not work together, how can we develop talent?”
On the likelihood of academy funding being included in the 2026 budget, Clarke said: “There has been a shift in our own thinking, to be honest. This is a long-term process. We are only going to get one chance to make a success of this so it is important that we do it correctly rather than quickly.”
