The news is just in, and the Irish team finally has a new boss to lead us to future glory. Giovanni Trapattoni is a great manager, and his appointment as manager of the Irish national soccer team is the best thing that has happened to the sport in this country for years. Trapattoni is definitely the best-qualified and most experienced coach to ever take up the position. And with Marco Tardelli being assigned the job of assistant manager, and the legendary Liam Brady waiting in the wings to get involved, things could not be brighter.
The contrast with the shambolic employment two years ago of Ireland’s most-capped player Steve Staunton as manager, with former England manager Bobby Robson as his adviser, is remarkable. That last appointment by the FAI was ill-conceived and ill-fated, and brought us much grinding and gnashing of teeth.
However, while I agree that Trapattoni’s appointment is the best thing for Irish soccer, I wish I could say I was happy about it. You see, it was only made possible because the tax exile Denis O’Brien coughed up half of the cost of the new management deal. And that is what bugs me. It’s all wrong.
Denis O’Brien is someone who reportedly amassed a fortune of 317m euro from the sale of Esat Telecom, but didn’t want the Irish State to get its hands on too much of it. O’Brien is a man who made his millions on the backs of non-unionised labour and then emigrated with his profits. It appears he didn’t like the idea of paying his taxes to benefit the country where he made his money.
O’Brien was chairman of the organising committee of the Special Olympics in Ireland in 2003, but it seems he doesn’t feel that any of his money should help Irish children.
He is now throwing money at a populist football project, and yet he doesn’t consider it important enough that he should contribute to the funding of education, infrastructure, health services, policing and every other small project that the Irish State spends our money on. But that’s not for Mr O’Brien. Football is his thing.
I don’t blame the FAI for taking the money. They are under massive pressure to improve on the Staunton era, and a sugar daddy came out of the blue to make it happen, so how could they turn it down? Instead, I blame those in politics – those whose job it is to protect taxpayers’ money and to distribute and invest it fairly; those who have not condemned absolutely the actions of a man whose commitment to his country has been shown to be at best questionable, and at worst non-existent. I blame those commentators who fail to ask the tough questions.
I had hoped that Denis O’Brien would disappear from our screens and from our lives and prosper in protected silence somewhere far from here. If he wants to be a tax exile, then he should do it in embarrassment, not in pride. His financial support of a sports team does not make up for the fair taxes he has avoided by taking his money abroad. This flag-waving is unacceptable behaviour, and should be exposed as such.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin is a primary school teacher in the Sheriff Street area of Dublin, a member of the Labour Party, and formerly Dublin’s Deputy Lord Mayor. His column appears every week in Metro Eireann
