Republican News · Thursday 11 July 2002

Government should review FAI role in National Stadium

Describing the FAI sale to Rupert Murdoch's Sky of TV rights to Irish international soccer matches as a "betrayal of the fans", Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris has called on the government to review its participation in the National Stadium.

"Just last week the Dáil voted a special supplementary estimate to aid sporting bodies, including the FAI," said Ferris. "The government should now review the FAI's participation in the National Stadium project. Are we to have international soccer matches in our National Stadium made the exclusive TV property of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, further swelling his massive profits and depriving the majority of Irish people of TV coverage of their team?"

d at the July meeting of Dublin City Council, an emergency motion, calling on the FAI to review its deal with Sky TV, was passed. The motion, proposed by Councillor Dessie Ellis and his Sinn Féin colleagues, calls on the FAI "to review its deal with Sky TV in the interests of the loyal football fans who now feel they have been stabbed in the back".