Treacy confident of robust reform
Daire Walsh
Sport Ireland chief executive John Treacy has expressed his confidence in the Institute of Public Administration (IPA) delivering a series of robust reform proposals for the FAI.
IPA Director Aidan Horan is currently heading up a Governance Review Group, which is expected to create a foundation for change ahead of the football association’s AGM on July 27.
“We had said all along that we would like to have the majority [in the Review Group]. We have three people and we have the chair, so we know it’s going to be robust.
“The piece around it that’s important as well is that the IPA are a key partner of ourselves in terms of what we do, in terms of corporate governance. They are experts in the field,” Treacy remarked at the Sport Ireland Institute’s annual review for 2018.
“A lot of organisations, from the public sector and from the voluntary sector, go to a lot of those seminars that they have through the course of the year.
“We go ourselves, our audit committee go as well and they come and deliver for us to the sports as well.
“We have that ongoing dialogue with them all the time.
“They’re tried and tested, and they’re people we have great confidence in.
“They’ll come back, I guarantee you, with very strong and robust ways forward in terms of corporate governance.”
Yesterday’s review came at the end of a month where the FAI have been firmly in the spotlight. On April 10, a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism & Sport quizzed John Delaney and other members of the FAI on various aspects of the Association’s finances and corporate governance during Delaney’s tenure as CEO.
Despite acknowledging Sport Ireland are yet to view the finalised document of this much-discussed Oireachtas committee, Treacy believes a patient approach is required for this ongoing saga.
“We haven’t seen that finalised document yet. We would expect to see if fairly shortly, but we know they’re doing an important piece of work.
“We did see the terms of reference and what I would just say is that those terms of reference, from what we saw, were very comprehensive.”
While there is speculation the current board may run again at the forthcoming AGM, it is Treacy’s understanding they will step down to make way for a new era in the Association.
In the meantime, Treacy is focused on ensuring ‘prevention’ is a key component of the Sport Ireland Institute as they move forward into next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.
“An Institute is about prevention. Making sure the athletes don’t get hurt and if they get hurt, there’s somewhere to go immediately.
“We can all remember our own days when you’d be searching around for someone to look for to help and there’d be big delays.
“Now if an athlete has an issue, they’re seen by medical people straight away.
“There’s plenty of models of Institutes around the world and I think we have an advantage being a small country, knowing our athletes extremely well,” Treacy added.