
A ROW over governance of the Limerick soccer league has led to concerned parties taking out ads in local newspapers asking why the league accounts have not been audited and why committee members are not limited to a fixed term in office.
The issue was also raised in the Seanad this week when Sinn Fรฉin Senator Paul Gavan said that club members who have questioned the governance of Limerick District League (LDL) are โoperating in an atmosphere of fear and loathingโ.
The row has blown up between members of more than 30 of the leagueโs 50 clubs, as well as coaches and parents, about what they claim is a bad governance.
David Walsh, a coach with Lisnagry FC, is one of the people who feels that the league is not moving with the times and that committee members have been in their positions for far too long. He also believes there should be an independent audit of finances.
โSome of the committee are there for thirty years. In GAA, committee members have a term and then they step down to allow fresh ideas and a different way of doing things. Thatโs how it should be, but you donโt get anything fresh when the same people have been in the job that long,โ he told the Limerick Post.
He said that people are also concerned there is no independent oversight of finances and that, despite a recommendation from the FAI that the LDL accounts be audited over a year ago, an audit has yet to be carried out.
โThere are sums of around โฌ90,000 involved in this. In any organisation, that kind of money would have to be audited. We canโt understand how that hasnโt been done. It doesnโt look good when thereโs no outside scrutiny of how that kind of money is being handled.โ
The concerned club members want a time limit put on the term in office of committee members.
โNothing changes if the people donโt change. For instance, we have no women on the committee,โ Mr Walsh said.
After the concerned LDL clubs asked the FAI to step in and advise on the row, the FAI recommended both the audit and the creation of terms in office as well as the election of at least one woman to the committee.
โLimerick soccer could be amazing if we moved forward and worked together. The GAA have terms for their committee members and they are doing fantastic things.
โAll we want is to see soccer in Limerick grow and for people and kids to get involved and to play, but without a change in governance we canโt go forward,โ he said.
The Limerick Post contacted a member of the current committee for a comment on the situation but he said there would be no comment at present.
Senator Gavan told the Seanad that recommendations were made by the FAI over a year ago, none of which have yet been implemented by the LDL Committee.
โChief among these was the need for an audit of accounts for 2020, an issue that was described by the FAI as being โof significant concernโ. Yet, over a year later, there has still been no audit carried outโ
Senator Gavan said that โthere were 11 recommendations in all, including the need for term limits for committee members โ a highly important issue when some officers have been in place for between 30 and 35 years โ the need to appoint at least one female committee member (out of 12), and an updated rule bookโ.
โI am informed that, to date, the FAI has failed to ensure that any of these recommendations have actually been implemented.
โAfter all that the FAI has been through in recent years, it beggars belief that having identified a series of recommendations to improve governance, they have failed to ensure implementation of any of them.
โI understand that the senior management of the FAI have been made aware of all these issues but have failed to take any action. The FAI need to act now, otherwise they should be called to account for their inaction on these matters before the Oireachtas Committee.โ
He said that that โat heart of this story is the all-male management of the boardโ, where positions have โbeen held for 30 and 33 yearsโ without a time limit on those positions.
โThe recommendations that were given by the FAI have not reached Limerick,โ he said.