"Awful" layoffs highlight disregard for grassroots football in Ireland says FAI staff member

A source within the FAI has described planned job cuts to grassroots football staff as "awful",  adding that the move will likely have negative long-term implications for Irish soccer.

It was announced in recent weeks that the FAI had told 100 staff to re-apply for roles within the body, as they plan to remove around 60 jobs from their 255-strong organisation over the coming months.

The majority of redundancies, criticised by the Labour Party and by SIPTU, are to focus on player development staff, including those involved in ETB courses (which offer training combined with sport-themed education for talented young athletes).

"We've all been told they're cancelling the courses and all the co-ordinators and assistant co-ordinators are being made redundant," a source, who is among those being made redundant, told Hot Press. "It was an awful way they did it.

"They had a town hall meeting in the Crowne Plaza in Blanchardstown, with the rest of the staff on Teams Meetings looking in. They went through a powerpoint with different scenarios and then [Director of Football] John Martin announced the people who are being made redundant – which was the development officers and the ETB staff .

"They put up this chart and said 'These people will be made redundant'. That was the first time we all heard it. All the staff was listening in, and it was a terrible way of doing it. They should have got all us ETB staff together and informed us."

The shedding of a significant number of its workforce arrives as the FAI attempts to curb spending. As it stands, the organisation is €38m in debt, and aims to be 'debt-free' by 2036, an extension on last year's 2031 target.

While progress has been made in recent years in terms of getting that number down, the FAI has nonetheless been criticised for overspending. The Sunday Independent reported recently that Irish football's governing body went almost €100,000 over budget, when they spent €242,302 on a PR consultancy firm.

At the FAI AGM this past weekend, CEO David Courell said pay cuts for senior management were not being considered.

“There is absolutely a big disconnect with the senior management team and the people who are on the ground," added the source. "We were the easy targets. Higher management were the ones that have caused this. There’s too many staff. Since they've come in, it's gone up to something like 255 staff. The FAI is in €30 to €40 million debt.

"What sort of a business loads up the staff, when they’re in that sort of debt? The thing that makes me laugh is they're in debt and it's not costing them a penny to run these ETB courses.

"I don't know what they're doing. Maybe it's the right way to go, but I can't see it. They seem to be getting rid of all the football lads, as they talk about digital marketing and all of this sort of stuff."

The source added that the FAI has shifted its focus onto 'elite football', which could have negative implications for Irish football in the long term.

"The money they get from the government is going into the League of Ireland to develop academies," the source said. "They're definitely concentrating on the internationals and LOI clubs.

"Concentrating on elite football is going to affect the grassroots. They're basically ignoring grassroots football. It won't have an effect right away, but long term it will. There's something like 30 percent of lads that came through the ETB courses playing League of Ireland football.

"It's the expertise of the lads that are on the ground that will be missing. All of these fellas that have been around long time in football, and they're all going to be lost. Nearly 60 staff – that's a lot of experience, and a lot of advice, that will be be missed."