From May 2008 to July 2009 I served as chief officer of Athletics Ireland. Prior to this role, I worked as an actuary for more than 15 years in various insurance companies. Alongside this, I was involved in the sport of athletics as a participant and as an administrator. Most notably, I was a board member of Athletics Ireland and chaired its finance and risk committee for two years prior to my appointment as chief executive officer of the organisation.
My brother Peter is an Irish record holder and Olympian and my brother John currently coaches some of the country's most promising athletes. I and my family have strong links with the sport of athletics.
I am here to talk about the subject of good governance in Irish sport and I welcome the committee's interest in this subject and thank it for the invitation to speak on it. I particularly thank the committee for its ongoing interest in the events surrounding my appointment and subsequent events as they relate to governance in sport and transparency about expenditure of taxpayer funds. The committee's input into the subject has provided a platform for informed discussion on some of the points raised by my case and without this, some key issues would simply have been swept under the carpet.
The committee chairman has asked me for my views on the changes I would recommend for the future based on the specifics of my case and my experience in general. I welcome the opportunity to communicate these in a positive environment. I will speak about issues relating to the work Irish Sports Council and my experience of it and what I see as positive changes for the future, based on what happened in the past.
Since the establishment of the Irish Sports Council, approximately €400 million has been channelled through the organisation to elite athletes, governing bodies of sport as well as to local sports partnerships and there is no doubt that much good has been accomplished as a result of this. However, in establishing value for money in the long term, I suggest some priorities that should be addressed in order to move to best practice governance. I emphasise this is based on my experience.
The Irish Sports Council should set out its own governance standards after an independent review of same to be conducted immediately and concluded as soon as possible. It can only be credible in demanding governance standards in the organisations it funds when it is seen to be fully compliant with a high standard of governance itself. An independent review of the Irish Sports Council's governance standards and its past performance with regard to internal governance should be carried out by an independent body to be appointed by the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport. If this was done, the damage to the credibility suffered by the organisation and the breakdown in trust between it and some if its key stakeholders would begin to be restored.
The Irish Sports Council should operate its strategic and operational plans with due regard to outcomes and their public measurement. I suggest immediate publication of a five-year strategic plan, a 2011 operating plan and a quarterly publication of performance benchmarked against objectives to commence in the first quarter of 2011. I suggest a detailed review in each quarter. Currently the 2009-11 plan is on the Irish Sports Council's website. I am not critical of it as there is nothing inherently wrong with its contents but a credible follow-up to this plan would take a different shape especially in terms of its strategic approach to implementation and specification objectives.
The Irish Sports Council should support national governing bodies as they move to increasingly professional standards in a fully transparent manner. Direct links should be created to levels of funding with levels of registered membership, elite achievement, club development and participation. It should be very explicit about these areas, not just to increase participation, but to sit down and decide what exactly are those objectives, otherwise they are always subject to interpretation. That is what we need to move away from. Funding should be contingent on certain minimum standards in the areas of child welfare and governance, all of which should be fully documented. There is some documentation on the Irish Sports Council website on this area on toolkits for national governing bodies. However, the documents on the website refer repeatedly to Australian legislation and infrastructure. I do not doubt there is good in that but at the same time, is it fit for purpose that it is referring to Australian legislation? It possibly undermines the strength of what it has to say by being seen to be doing that rather than have a discussion in an Irish context on the subject. The Irish Sports Council should operate in a collaborate manner with the national governing bodies and its leadership should mirror that spirit of collaboration.
Contact with national governing bodies should only occur on a formal level, with more than one representative from each body present, with full minutes to be agreed by both sides. The representation of the national governing bodies should be fully decided by the national governing bodies themselves. In particular, there should be a "off-line" meetings with individuals from governing bodies where separate understandings to those signed off by the boards of both bodies are discussed.
This may seem unusual in its formality, but this was a key area of difficulty in my tenure as CEO of Athletics Ireland and I believe that in order to re-establish the required levels of professional trust between at least some governing bodies and the National Sports Council this is required in the short to medium term. It should also be borne in mind that as it is taxpayers' money that is being distributed by the Irish Sports Council, a high degree of transparency and accountability should be brought to any transactions, including meeting between individuals in the bodies, with organisations which are in receipt of funding.
The withholding of any allocated funding from governing bodies should not be left to the discretion of the Irish Sports Council CEO or any sports council executive for that matter. Indeed, it should be so serious a matter that this step should be taken only with the approval of the Minister.
As per the recommendations of the Crawford report - I recommend it as reading for anybody interested in this area - regarding itsAustralian equivalent, the Irish Institute of Sport should be separate from the sports council as originally intended. It should compete for business with private sector providers on an equal footing basis, and not be tied to the Irish Sports Council. This would ensure that the highest quality of service provision was available to elite athletes and would remove any suggestion of conflict of interest.
The Irish Sports Council should publish standards for professional appointments to national governing bodies and oversee the implementation of those standards but otherwise, it should play no role in the selection of staff in national governing bodies. In particular, it should be very dear to all parties that the sports council does not have a veto over staff appointments in governing bodies.
The Irish Sports Council should respect the autonomy of high performance units within governing bodies. Its role should be restricted to the creation of standards of best practice in the administration and management of such units and the oversight of same but it should have a role in the day-to-day delivery of high performance services for specific sports. Carding for elite athletes should be administered through the governing bodies and the sports council should not have any input or influence on elite athletes directly through funding controls, that is, these should be decided by the governing bodies and supported by best practice guidelines as facilitated by the sports council. These steps would facilitate meaningful feedback and input from elite athletes and help guide improvements in high performance systems without the fear of recrimination that currently exists and that I am aware of from direct contact with elite athletes.
The Irish Sports Council should be required to formally report each year on the legal costs and actions it has undertaken in the course of the year. A State body has an unfair advantage in going to law as there are no financial consequences for its executive. Permission for such action should be sought from the council members and the Minister. If and when cases arise, there should be a process in place where any individuals directly involved with the case are placed at arms length from strategic decisions which directly affect the case.
These are some suggestions which I hope will get the ball rolling on a debate about the subject. They reflect my direct experience of some of the areas where significant short-term improvements can be made. Some areas are better than others and I do not wish to downplay the many areas where the Irish Sports Council has made a positive difference in the years since its establishment. Given this fact, I would encourage people that rather than become defensive about the status quo, they should be prepared to reflect on mistakes of the past and use them for the benefit of the future.
What history shows and what the committee, working with the Minister and the Irish Sports Council members must ensure cannot again happen, is that the Irish Sports Council acts as a law unto itself, without political or any other type of oversight in a way that is damaging to the development of sport in Ireland. Fundamentally, the remit of the council needs to be firmly and formally established and that remit should be explicit about the unacceptability of interference by the Irish Sports Council in the day-to-day activities of the governing bodies - with particular emphasis on senior appointments within these organisations. The implications of failure in the above areas in the years since its establishment were evident in the events surroundingmy employment with Athletics Ireland. Ultimately the taxpayer bore the cost of this.
One of the fallouts of the situation that was created in Athletics Ireland was the inability of the organisation to hire a director of athletics due to Irish Sports Council's rolein the original process which took place almost two and a half years ago. The people who suffer as a result of this are the athletes and it saddens me that only 18 months before the London Olympics, there is still no advance on this issue within Athletics Ireland.
I thank the committee for its interest in and engagement with the issues being discussed here today. I would be happy to elaborate on any point on which members seek clarification and to answer any questions they may have.