John Delaney has secured a pay-off deal worth around €500,000 to resign from his position as Executive Vice President with the FAI, the Irish Mirror can confirm.
A source told last night that Delaney, 52, was given three months notice on his contract which also includes his pension entitlements.
“The new board wanted Delaney out. They feel they can’t move on from the loan scandal until he’s gone,” they revealed.
“The exact figures will be published in the FAI accounts in November.”
The “ballpark figure of around €500,000” amounts to about 18 months basic salary for Delaney who was paid €360,000 plus expenses and allowances.
The Waterford native’s future with Uefa is also hanging in the balance as they also want him to resign his position from its Executive Committee, effectively its board.
Sports Minster Shane Ross said yesterday that the Government will not restore funding to the FAI until details of any severance payment made by the FAI to Delaney have been made public.
Mr Ross, who admitted that a “dark cloud still looms” over the Association, said that the Government are seeking to know the extent of any financial agreement made with Mr Delaney.
“The FAI is continuing again to shrowd these contracts in mystery, we have an interest in that.
“I think it’s absurd after all the controversy that we shouldn’t know exactly what the pay-off is.”
He said he also wanted to see considerable governance reforms from the ground up so that the ‘old regime’ would be “renewed in its entirety.”
“It’s not good enough to chop off one head and save the rest of them,” he added. “We’ve got to see root and branch reform.”
Mr Ross said the public must be assured that “large sums were not being paid unnecessarily” to restore confidence in the Associate.
Three separate reports that have been commissioned into the financial affairs of the FAI are still being waited on, with the first audit by KOSI Corporation Ltd is espected to be published next week.
The Minister’s comments were also echoed by Fine Gael TD Noel Rock.
“It’s right that the FAI work to put this issue and John Delaney behind them and set their sights on a football focussed future,” he told the Irish Mirror last night.
“However, realistically, for government funding to be restored, trust and transparency must be at the heart of that - and that starts with the terms of the settlement with John Delaney.
“They must be published. Anything less is not good enough”.
Delaney had been in post as FAI chief executive for 14 years before a restructure was announced in March.
That came in the wake of a review into the FAI’s financial dealings after it was revealed Delaney gave the governing body a €100,000 loan in 2017.
Delaney said the loan was designed to “aid a very short-term cash flow issue”.
The FAI stated the “bridging loan”, given in April 2017, was repaid in full to Delaney two months later.
The FAI said in a statement released late on Saturday night that Delaney had resigned “with immediate effect.”
Delaney’s close pal John O’Regan, the secretary for the Kerry District League, said the controversial former soccer supremo was “left with no option but to leave.”
He told the Irish Mirror: “I’d be a bit sad after all the work John has done in the past, he’s been a good friend to grassroots football and Kerry soccer in his tenure as Chief Executive and also as Treasurer prior to that.
“I think he was left with no option only to leave. It was the right time for him to leave, he’s better to move on now and follow whatever he wants to do in the future and I wish him the best of luck in that.”
“As a good friend and as a good soccer man, he has always been good to Kerry and I can only judge him on what he did for Kerry and grassroots football across Ireland and that’s the way I’ll remember him.
He added: “Maybe he made a few mistakes and things like that, I suppose the biggest one was giving that loan of a €100,000.”
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