Mick McCarthy should hand back the million plus that he’s getting for going. The money is rightfully his but almost certainly it wasn’t rightfully given.

He is entitled to it as per his contractual agreement and he has done nothing wrong. But it was not the FAI who agreed to these terms, it was John Delaney who reportedly agreed to them. This was in November 2018. In September 2019 Delaney left the FAI, discredited and disgraced. McCarthy had unknowingly agreed terms and conditions with someone who now stands suspected of malpractice.

These terms included a yearly salary of €1.2m, a bonus of €1m if Ireland qualified for Euro 2020, and a €1.2m ‘exit payment’ after he made way for his appointed successor, Stephen Kenny.

It was announced eight days ago that McCarthy had stepped down as manager of the men’s national football team. His 16 and a half months in charge had yielded him an estimated salary of €1.8m. Should Ireland qualify for Euro 2020 (to be played post-coronavirus next summer), it is reported he will receive €800,000 of the qualification bonus. And as of last weekend his €1.2m ‘exit payment’ also kicked in.

This is one payment too far. To repeat: Mick McCarthy is perfectly entitled to have his contract honoured in its entirety. But the €1.2m is tainted money; it is soiled by the behaviour of the person who promised it to him. Delaney was spending other people’s money. He was giving away money that the FAI could not afford.

The FAI was on the brink of insolvency in November 2018. In January the Government intervened with a financial bailout package that saved the FAI from collapse. McCarthy is effectively being paid €1.2m from the public purse.

Delaney allegedly offered him this golden handshake as a lucrative sop, an incentive to persuade McCarthy to walk away after Euro 2020. It is legitimate to ask if this was just another spendthrift solo run by the then CEO. Evidence already in the public domain is littered with damning references to his style of leadership.

“John was out of control and the board wasn’t able to, or didn’t want to, reel him in,” an FAI source recently told The Sunday Times. “Payments were approved by the CEO and a number of senior members of the board.”

Donal Conway stepped down as FAI president in January. He had spent 14 years on the board of directors. “The old culture was not sufficiently transparent,” he conceded in a media interview last October. Contracts sometimes were not discussed with the full board, but with “anointed nominees”. Asked if this also applied to the terms and conditions drawn up for managers of the national team, Conway said: “The contracts were not put across the board table and scrutinised at the board table. The contracts were drafted and you’d get a report at the board table.”

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And then of course there was the slew of revelations about the CEO’s various spending sprees on the company tab. In addition to his €360,000 salary, he worked his way through another €40,000 on his FAI credit card for the last six months of 2016 alone. This included €6,000 in cash withdrawals, €500 on two visits to an executive dry-cleaning service, €400 at a Hilfiger store and €226 on shirts from Thomas Pink.

The FAI also paid over €8,000 for a stay by Delaney at the Ritz-Carlton in New York. And for a number of years it paid him €3,000 per month in rent allowance. While FAI staff were enduring pay cuts and poor wages and conditions, Delaney in these years was enjoying the time of his life.

How much standing can a contract have when it is signed, sealed and delivered by a beggar on horseback?

At the FAI’s AGM last December, accountancy firm Deloitte presented their financial report for 2018. It was here that the FAI’s debt was confirmed at €55m. The previous April, Deloitte filed a notice with the Companies Registration Office, claiming that proper books of account had not been kept by the FAI. In its report to the AGM, the debt of €55m was cited among other reasons as to why Deloitte “were unable to find sufficient audit evidence to support the assumption that the company will continue as a going concern.”

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The Deloitte report is also littered with references to the unorthodox culture of governance that prevailed in Abbotstown. It contains loaded terms such as “undeclared transactions”, “undetected misstatements”, “absence of internal audit and compliance functions”, “previously unrecorded contracts”, “a material breakdown in internal control”, “a voluntary disclosure of underpaid employment taxes and VAT”. They claimed at the AGM that they had been “misled” while carrying out their work. (In January they formally resigned as the FAI’s auditors.)

This is extraordinary language for a conservative, establishment auditing firm to be publishing about one of its clients. Deloitte themselves have come under scrutiny for their apparent passivity whilst supervising the FAI’s accounts. Hence presumably the undiplomatic language in their final report before quitting the job.

But if they can bandy around phrases such as “undeclared transactions” and “previously unrecorded contracts”, one wonders if the deal with McCarthy can also be filed under these headings. Was this one of those contracts which, as Conway said, “were not put across the board table and scrutinised at the board table”?

Well even if it was, legal opinion suggests that the contract is still valid. “Mick McCarthy or his agent would have negotiated that contract in good faith,” says James McDermott, co-author with his brother, the late Paul Anthony McDermott, of the book Contract Law.

McCarthy and his agent were not obliged at the time to be cognisant of any background circumstances pertaining to finance or governance within the FAI. The contract negotiated in November 2018 still stands, irrespective of any subsequent disclosures in the public domain. “The FAI were his employers,” says McDermott, “he was the employee, I would think that the contract between both parties is as valid now as it was then.”

And in fairness to the new regime at the FAI, they haven’t said anything different. They are honouring the terms of the contract. McCarthy will be paid in full. But Big Mick has an active conscience. No one has ever questioned his integrity. In terms of the football industry, he is the archetypal straight man in a crooked world.

Still, Irish football has been very good to him. He was a journeyman centre-half when he seized the opportunity that Jack Charlton gave him. He made his own luck thereafter. But he was already 29 by the time he featured at Euro ’88. He was with Celtic at that stage, having been relegated with Manchester City from the English First Division in 1987. The closest he ever came to the big time was in the international arena.

As a manager he’d spent four years at Millwall FC in the second division before being handed the Ireland job. It was quite the leap to make and in the early years it showed. He made a lot of mistakes. By his own admission many years later, he wasn’t ready.

His six and a half years culminated in the controversies of Saipan and the joys of World Cup 2002. But Ireland had given him the apprenticeship he needed, the platform upon which he built a good career in English management over the next 15 years.

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And having left Ipswich Town in April 2018, he was at a loose end when Ireland came calling again, the following November. And this time they came calling with the aforementioned terms and conditions. His €1.8m salary was earned for ten games over eight months in 2019. His team performances were usually dour and sometimes dire. They finished third in their qualifying group having scored a paltry seven goals in eight games.

The reason Ireland are still contending for a place at Euro 2020 is down to the bizarre permutations of UEFA’s Nations League competition, played in the autumn of 2018 when Martin O’Neill was still in charge. It is now up to Stephen Kenny to steer Ireland through the play-offs. If they do make it, McCarthy will pick up €800,000 having had no hand, act or part in getting them there.

And on top of that, he is getting €1.2m for basically agreeing to bugger off when Kenny’s turn came round. Normally most people get paid to do a job, not to not do a job. This arrangement was facilitated by the rogue CEO of an organisation that almost became bankrupt under his regime. The money wasn’t there, and it was not in Delaney’s gift to squander it in this fashion.

Legally, McCarthy is apparently entitled to every single cent. Morally? That’s a different story.