BrenC wrote: My understanding is that after 60 years the IRFU own Aviva outright - FAI would then have to pay rent if they want to keep using it.    Therefore the Aviva is a fixed asset owned by IRFU in their accounts which will depreciate with wear and tear.  In the FAI accounts, their interest in the stadium is a right to use if for 50 plus years which decreases in value (logically) each year - hence the FAI's interest is an intangible rather than a tangible asset.    Haven't looked at both accounts so may be wrong.

Obviously I am not privy to all the details, but John Fallon’s Sunday Business Post article revealed that circa. €20m in interest payments alone has been paid by the FAI in relation to the Aviva due to the lack of success of the ten year premium ticket sales. Then once the 60 year period is up the FAI will have a 0% stake in the asset….none of this is sounding very good at all to me!

The fact that the Delaney/ the FAI have refused to allow any questions from the press after their AGM for the second year running tells an awful lot imo. Worrying times indeed.

Also downloaded the accounts from the CRO. Not much to be gotten from them given they’re summary accounts but a few things that were interesting:

If the FAI put in the same financial performance this year, they will be under severe pressure to pay the finance charges let alone pay off any of the debt. They are under obligation to pay off €1m of the debt this year and €2m next year (see further below).

The FAI received the following grant aid in 2013:

Dept of Environment:    €42,990

Dept of Children & Youth Affairs:              €349,242

Irish Sports Council:        €2,842,932

Dept of Foreign Affairs: €42,000

Total wages and salaries were €7,738,249 with an average number of employees of 152. 2012 was €9,559,536 and 156. I believe JD takes his pay as director’s remuneration and wouldn’t be included in this figure. This puts the average salary, not including JD, at around €51k versus €61k in 2012. It is likely to be higher than €51k since there were redundancy and payroll restructuring costs of €1,125,763 suggesting the final number of staff was lower by the year end so full year salaries wouldn’t have been paid to everyone.  Assuming there is quite a big range across the 150 or so employees, there are likely some other well paid individuals.

The €11.7m debt restructuring is net of costs to restructure of €791,436. It probably won’t be known what the new debt servicing costs are until this year’s accounts are filed late next year. Or unless JD actually answers that question – or any question.

Before the debt was restructured, the main debt of about €58m was repayable between two and five years. This arrangement was probably because JD initially assumed he’d get a windfall from the Vantage scheme and pay off the debt in the short term. Under the new arrangement, the debt is repayable as follows:

1 year:  €1m

1-2 years:            €2m

2-5 years:            €20m

After 5 years:     €26.5m

This suggests they were under severe pressure to pay off National Irish Bank/Danske so had to pull the restructuring with the Americans “Corporate Capital Trust” together before the year end. This pressure and the likely terms they were forced to agree to is probably why JD is so reluctant to share details. Presumably their ‘business plan’ is to pay off half by 2020 and the other half when the stadium naming rights and 10 year tickets are renewed. Given recent financial performance, that could be very ambitious.

Also available on the CRO, are details of the charges filed by initially National Irish Bank around 2009/2010 and more recently by Corporate Capital Trust and Bank of Ireland to secure their debts (BOI provide their overdraft). I’ve only skimmed through them but what’s kind of alarming is that the charge initially filed in relation to the NIB debt mainly related to financial assets like bank accounts and interests in the stadium. The new charge filed last year in favour of Corporate Capital Trust is much more far reaching.

They hold a charge over pretty much all the FAI’s assets including land/buildings, bank accounts, interest in the stadium, intellectual property, goodwill, revenue generating contracts, future revenue including ticket revenue, insurance policies and everything else down to JD’s ties. I’m assuming here that land and buildings would include the only owned land and buildings listed on the FAI’s 2013 accounts which are the football grounds in Drogheda and Cobh but probably also extends to the FAI’s interest in the AUL complex. But in other words, if they cannot meet their repayment obligations, the FAI and everything associated with it could be wiped out and Irish football would be jettisoned back 50 years. That could be the final cost of JD cocking up the 10 year ticket scheme.

Yeah, this stuff is a lot more boring than what’s going on over in the Delaney Out thread.  Will try and add anything I can in relation to those questions based on my limited accounting knowledge:

My understanding of all things CRO is that these accounts are the FULL accounts (I kid you not!!) rather than the summary accounts. The only difference that I can see between what I got from CRO and what is on the annual reports are the "Notes" - but my sources tell me that FULL accounts are supposed to be posted to CRO by legislation.

 The accounts are supposed to be the full accounts to the extent they should reflect all the top line numbers but they don’t have to be detailed accounts insofar as breaking those numbers down.  I believe technically speaking they are the “abridged accounts” that must be filed.

I understand also that a company must present the accounts filed with the CRO at their AGM which is why they’d be the same, the difference being only the main accounts without the notes were obviously presented by the FAI at the AGM.

That said there are a couple of things whcih don't add up (sorry about teh pun...!!) Why is there no breakdown of Income into appropriate areas - Matchday, Ticketing, Sponsorship, corporate, Grants ? (A glance at the IRFU annual report shows full breakdown into respective areas)  Why is there no breakdown of "Cost of sales" of 23.7 Million? What was the 23.7 million spent on? It's a lot of expenditure but no information to explain it.

As above, because they’re not obliged to.

Salaries cost is 9.5 Million but Admin Expenses (where you normally put Salaries) is only 8.3 Million -why the difference? Is the Salaries figuer included in "Cost of Sales"? If so, what is in the 8.3 Million for Admin expenses- thats a lot of photo copying, phone calls and toner cartridges...!!)

I’d guess that salaries are spread across Cost of Sales and Admin. Some salaries could probably be directly attributed to sales such as match related staff while other staff is probably purely admin and included under admin expenses. This doesn’t tell you what their real non payroll admin expenses are, including travel expenses, entertainment expenses etc.

The Directors remuneration Note 7 shows 360,000 (which might be for JD) It also shows another 55,000 for Officers emoluments (salary by any other name) - who got that 55k? Is this 415,000 included in the Salries Cost, or even the Admin Expenses Figure?

Yeah, you’d have to assume the €360k is JD since that’s his claimed salary for the past year or so. The €55k is presumably payments to other directors in the FAI some of whom probably just fulfil an honorary/part-time type role.

I believe these costs strictly speaking shouldn’t be in the salaries section but they could then be under the Admin costs in the P&L.

Why is this note 7 flagged against a Total figure, and not an Expenditure figure in the Income and Expenditure account (you would have expected to see this note listed against Salaries, or Cost of Sales, or Admin Expenses)? - I can't understand this at all - Note 7 bears no relationship to the Income And Expendituer account from what I can see??

The P&L all adds up so I’m assuming that these figures are pulled out into a different note because there is an obligation to state those specific figures separately (director’s remuneration, depreciation etc.)

1.1 Million was spent as a "once off" measure in reducing the staffing number by 4 - that implies a retirement package of about 250k per person. Would that be about the normal amount?

Actually one “employee” that may or may not be included in the salaries is Trapattoni. If he is included then the redundancy costs could be partly related to his payoff. I would have expected him to be an independent contractor as such as opposed to an Irish salaried employee but who knows. The numbers of employees are just averages over the year so by the end of the year they could have made more than four redundancies and had to make redundancy payments accordingly. The statutory redundancy a company must pay is roughly two weeks’ pay for every year worked.

Note 23 Pensions - NIL was paid into the Pension Fund by the Employer in 2013, with NIL being owed at the end of 2013. I dont understand this. I thought Employers had to pay pension contributions for staff, regardless of whether it is a defined Benefit or Defined cotnribution scheme?? But again, I may be wrong here.

 As far as I know there is no obligation for employers to contribute to a defined contribution scheme, it is normally done as an additional benefit. With cut backs, maybe the FAI stopped contributing in 2013.

I didn't see the bank stuff on CRO but your last paragraph should be sent to the Sunday Business Post. Perhaps they might be able to make sense of the Accounts and discover what agreeement the FAI have reached with the banks agreed in respect of the debt the Association is saddled with.

Good idea. The fact the FAI have effectively signed over everything down to the kitchen sink is headline material in itself.

One interesting aspect of this just occurred to me because JD’s “debt write down” explanation never added up, especially in the absence of answers to related questions. In early 2013 I heard rumours the FAI were on the brink of financial collapse, then in mid 2013 this story was reported – http://www.irishmirror.ie/sport/soccer/soccer-news/uefa-steps-assist-football-association-1942285

I was surprised at the time that the media didn’t pick up on it more but we all know how much of the media in Ireland works in relation to the FAI. This was huge news because it meant the FAI had been bailed out and has massive implications for the future of Irish football. What I’m wondering is, did UEFA make this payment directly to Danske Bank which was reported at the AGM by JD as a “debt write down”. If this is correct, this would be a huge lie to tell at an AGM.