FAI's 2023 accounts confirm turnover increase but profit flatlines

Commercial income also rose to €20.8m from €15.6m, driven by a doubling of sponsorship to €9.1m. The FAI were still without a main sponsor in the financial year until December 2023 but had received an injection by switching kit supplier to Castore.

The key data was emailed to members on Thursday ahead of their annual general meeting on Saturday, September 14.

Primarily resulting from the improved streams, turnover rose to €62.3m from the €54m banked in 2022.

That boon, however, didn’t translate into bottom line gains, for their surplus remained static at €3.5m, of which €1.5m was deferred income from their state-funded Covid-19 resilience grant.

That’s attributable to their cost of sales soaring to just over €40m, an €8.2m uplift on the previous year.

Government officials scrutinising the FAI’s plea for increased funding will want to know how their administrative expenses increased to almost €17m and headcount rose from 230 employees to 251.

This FAI regime inherited a financial mess from the 2019 meltdown that required a bailout.

Thankfully, the debt has reduced to €43m and it’s clear from the accounts how €20m difference trumpeted by chief executive Jonathan Hill last June was shaved off the liabilities.

From their position of having €27m of cash in the bank at the end of 2021, the FAI’s reserves plummeted to €1.6m by the turn of the last year.

Under questioning at the Dáil‘s Public Accounts Committee hearing in February of this year, it was admitted that €1m of the Covid-19 resilience payout was used to discharge liabilities.

Interest charges on these liabilities, which peaked at €5m annual under the era of former chief executive John Delaney, were steady at €1.8m.

The matter of revenue liabilities has hovered over the association since first revealed in 2019. This audit has been completed but no settlement figure was cited.

“The association made unprompted, prompted, and voluntary disclosures to the Revenue Commissioners for the period 2015 to 2020,” it said in the directors’ report.

“An external professional services firm was engaged to assist with this full review, which has now been concluded.

“The directors believe these financial statements include adequate liabilities due in respect of this review.” That section of the financial statements also acknowledges the ongoing criminal probe traced back to the 2019 crisis.

“Certain affairs of the association remain under investigation by the Office of The Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), as part of a long-running investigation. The association continues to support this investigation in every way that it can.” 

Now renamed as the Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA), the quest by Delaney to debar certain information being examined by it has failed, right up to the Supreme Court in January of this year.

The only “event recorded after the accounting date” refers to the cessation of Hill’s employment in April following his disastrous attempt at the PAC to account for his involvement in receiving erroneous payment for untaken holidays.

The FAI add that his successor is to be appointed in “late 2024.”.