I welcome from Athletics Ireland Mr. Liam Hennessy, president, Mr. John Foley, chief executive officer, and Professor Ciaran Ó Catháin, chairman of finance and risk.
I wish to advise the witnesses that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of the evidence they give to this committee. If they are directed by the committee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and they continue to do so, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given, and they are asked to respect parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against a Member of either House, a person outside the House or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable. Members of the committee have absolute privilege. However, I wish to remind them of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that members should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official either by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.
As Chairman of the committee I wish to make a few brief opening comments before the delegation speaks about the Athletic Ireland. Our interest as a committee is to ensure that taxpayers' money is used wisely, effectively and efficiently in promoting athletics at every level throughout the country. We all agree that Ireland has a strong reputation in athletics, particularly in running. I have no doubt the recent success of our under-23 cross-country running team will give a great boost to athletics in the country. There are many other examples of this as we have shared in the glory of many fantastic athletes over many years.
As I stated, our focus is on athletics. I am a new Chairman of the committee, and it is sad that we have had one dispute too many in recent times at the organisational level of sport. It is something to which we would like to see an end. We are anxious to look to the future and that is what today is about. Previously, we met John Treacy, CEO, and Kieran Mulvey, chairman, of the Irish Sports Council. We made the point to them that we want to see the end of costly disputes, proper management procedures put in place and good governance in sporting organisations. We are not speaking about one particular organisation and we asked John Treacy to forward us details of the number of disputes and the costs involved and we are awaiting his response. We feel that transparency is very important in this regard. We are anxious to clear up any outstanding issues while we move on to a new agenda in athletics.
Today, we want to hear from the witnesses on their vision and strategy for the future. However, one important issue needs to be clarified before we start. We do not want to initiate a court-type procedure - that is not what we are about - but we are a statutory Oireachtas committee and we have had a long-standing practice of hearing various views. However, we recognise we have an important role with regard to the promotion of sports and athletics.
Prior to my appointment as Chairman of the committee, when my colleague, Deputy Michael Kennedy, was Chairman, Mr. Liam Hennessy with others attended a meeting of this committee in June 2009. As we are now aware, in the course of proceedings with regard to the Mary Coghlan court case it is alleged - and I stress that - in certain documentation that Mr. Hennessy stated he had prevaricated and spoofed, or some language to that effect, when he attended that particular meeting. Again, I was not Chairman at the time. We need clarification on this matter from the delegation before we get down to hearing its plans for the future.
It is fair to say the committee was very encouraged and impressed by the presentation made by Mr. Kieran Mulvey, the new chairman of the Irish Sports Council, when he came before the committee. We believe he shares our view that we need to put in place procedures to prevent disputes in particular and robust dispute resolution mechanisms and procedures where problems emerged that will keep people out of the courts and save taxpayers' money and ensure that resources and not spent on disputes but rather on promoting athletics and our athletes. We have seen many cases of fantastic people who are crying out for this to happen.
I wish to give Mr. Hennessy an opportunity to clarify this matter before we do anything else. If such comments were made we would take serious exception to them as an Oireachtas committee. I propose to give Mr. Liam Hennessy an opportunity to clarify this matter. In the interest of fairness, I must tell the delegation we intend to invite Mary Coghlan to address this committee early in the new year on the subject of good governance in sport, and we agreed this in private session prior to the beginning of this meeting.
I make these opening remarks because anyone who follows the proceedings of the committee will be aware that we are huge lovers of sports and athletics. In this case, we have only one focus, which is as a committee to ensure that athletics is in a healthy and transparent state. We are conscious of the huge public support for this area. I have never seen this as a secondary committee or as a committee of lesser importance than any other committee of the House. I know from my time as Minister of State with responsibility for labour affairs that Kieran Mulvey is very much in tune with the need for procedures on dealing with problems. We want to get away from all of this. I have only a certain amount of time left in the Dáil and it is one of my objectives to see this out of the way.
Whenever one has to deal with challenging issues the last thing one does is bury stuff under the carpet, leave it and state, "that was then and this is now" and other such nonsense. We cannot do so. I stated the same when representatives of the Irish Sports Council appeared before the committee. We need to get this clarified. If the clarification meets our satisfaction then so be it. In such a situation we will move on. I state this in good faith to Mr. Hennessy, Mr. Foley and Professor Ó Catháin. I am doing my best to speak for the committee. We do not want to open up new proceedings if at all possible. I am conscious that my colleague, Deputy Michael Kennedy, was the Chairman at the time and I am a new Chairman, but I feel obliged, out of respect for the committee, to get clarification on this. On this basis, I will hand over to Mr. Hennessy and I trust he will accept it on this basis. If we can get clarification on this we will be in a very good position to hear about his plans for the future.