Michael Healy-Rae was widely derided for his comments on John Delaney during April's Oireachtas hearing, and they only look worse in retrospect. The Kerry politician was full of praise for the way Delaney conducted his business, saying he would be treated like a hero when he landed in Kerry.
It was genuinely embarrassing. After all this, was a hearing where Delaney refused to answer a single question due to advice from his lawyers.
You can hear the love-in below, but it doesn't make for easy listening.
After a three-minute love letter from Michael Healy-Rae to John Delaney, Ruth Coppinger tells him: 'I'm sure there are grants heading down the Kerry way... You're an embarrassment.' pic.twitter.com/QiPvdFpUk5
— Balls.ie (@ballsdotie) April 10, 2019
You will be most welcome in Kerry. You will get what I would call the mother of all welcomes when you come to Kerry, because your respectability and reputation will proceed you down the road before you land and we will be there to welcome you...
If you're guilty of anything, you're guilty of helping an association in the best way you saw fit at that time.
It turns out he was probably guilty of a bit more than that.
The FAI have been run into the ground. They are on the verge of going under and it is going to take a major monetary intervention just to keep them afloat.
John Delaney is the man who must be held responsible, having been the main man in the FAI since 2004.
While most of us could see that things were not right within the FAI, it appears that the penny has only now dropped with Healy-Rae. He has backtracked on his comments from earlier this year, saying that he 'we are all geniuses now' after the association's failings came to light.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, he said:
Every one of us, yourself included, and every journalist in the country, we were all told in 2018 by the FAI and by the accountants, I believe, that the FAI were going to be financially debt free by 2020.
Of course we’re all very smart now. We have new information we didn’t have at that time...
I praised and complimented him for the work and interest he had in small clubs. We are all in possession of different details now.
Sure, we are all geniuses now. All I can say is I’m very disappointed for what happened.
This seems like more political point scoring.
