THE SALARY PAID to FAI chief executive John Delaney is symptomatic of what’s wrong with Ireland today, according to one opposition TD.
Richard Boyd Barrett says the €400,000 sum picked up by the Irish football chief every year is ‘obscene’ and sums up the disparity between those at the top and bottom of Irish society.
The People Before Profit deputy was asked by journalists for his opinion on Delaney’s contract at the opening of a new pitch in Ballybrack this week and is reported in The Irish Daily Star this morning.
Speaking to TheScore this morning, Barrett explains that though the issue of the FAI chief’s remuneration is not one towards the top of his list of priorities, he finds the figure jarring especially given the national circumstances.
“It’s obscene,” the Dun Laoghaire representative said, “but it’s very much my opinion that salaries of that order are obscene across the board.
“But when you see that amount paid out by a sporting organisation, particularly when small clubs and community groups across the country on the ground are struggling, it’s very much hard to take.
“I just find these huge salaries obscene when the rest of the county are on their knees, I think the idea that there are people on seven, eight, nine times the industrial wage is unacceptable.”
Delaney has been in the top job at the FAI since 2005 and currently earns over €400,000 per year.
The association is set for a windfall thanks to the qualification for Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine next summer.