363 days on from the dramatic arrest of Olympic Council of Ireland President Pat Hickey in a Brazilian hotel corridor, the Government commissioned report into the how’s and why’s of this greatest scandal in Irish sport has been published.

Judge Moran’s report was originally scheduled to take 12 weeks but from its opening paragraphs, it was clear that an unwillingness to participate from almost all those who could provide the clearest answers was going to make that impossible.

The lawyers acting for the Rio Organising Committee refused to engage at all and among the other ‘dramatis personae’, the International Olympic Committee, the former OCI President Pat Hickey, the ticket agents THG and Pro10 principal among them, were invoking a right to fair process in legal actions still underway in Rio as a reason not to have their say.

Drudgery

And so Judge Moran was left to rue the ways in which this could have been a better and more effective report.  His list of thanks is noteworthy, including reference to those who had ‘engaged in the drudgery of extracting relevant information from the enormous amount of electronic material provided’.

He details the lack of cooperation from each of the parties and even when it came to the OCI who had been willing to participate he makes reference to learning of extended deadlines through reading about them in the media and talks of material being ‘provided in an unstructured manner without any indication of what was relevant.  it was unedited and not tailored to the issues herein and accordingly, it fell to the Inquiry to carry out such editing and to put into shape a huge amount of documents to make the evidence coherent and comprehensible.’

There is no doubting the frustration expressed by Moran in producing a report which, while providing a detailed review of what happened is done so largely through the eyes of an outsider and without the material evidence of why contracts were signed and how this state of affairs carried on.

Cost

The cost of the report came in at €312,000, perhaps largely down to the time of sending unanswered emails and sifting and sorting the evidence that was made available.

It is a small sum compared to the cost of tribunals we have borne over recent years and some thanks should be given for that but it is still more than the total amount of core funding provided by the Government through Sport Ireland to the Olympic Council of Ireland, Cycling Ireland, Rowing Ireland, Gymnastics Ireland, the Confederation of Golf in Ireland, and Triathlon Ireland, all of whom had athletes competing in Rio, and to 42 other National Governing Bodies.

But it is a sum which had to be spent so that action could be taken and be seen to be taken on making sure that the problems exposed in Rio will not darken Irish sport again.

The OCI moved in February of this year to elect a new Executive Committee and has undertaken to implement all the recommendations of the Deloitte Report published before Christmas into shortcomings in corporate governance.

Determined

Sarah Keane is determined to fix the problems and put athletes back centre stage when it comes to the work of the OCI.  The OCI issued a list of the actions it has undertaken since February to this end, all of which are good and all of which will improve the situation that irish sport has when it comes to the Olympics.  But there are still many bridges to cross before w.e can say that things have been ‘fixed’ in the way we would all like.

It became public yesterday, perhaps inspired by the need for transparency that the spotlight of the report ensures, that the OCI appears bound by legal contracts signed by former president Pat Hickey with the Ticket Agents THG through Olympic Competitions all the way to 2026.

The first of those appears to be voided by the Local Organising Committee in Pyeongchang for next year’s Winter Games prohibiting THG as acting as an authorised ticket reseller.  Whether this is challenged by the company remains to be seen but as a major source of funding and a highly visible way in which the OCI serves athletes by making tickets available to families and coaches, it is an important issue to resolve.

It suggests that there will be many more substantial legal costs coming down the line, hardly a winning formula for an organisation which, over the four years from 2012 to 2015 generated annual income of an average €1.2 million.

Sponsorship

In 2015, €229,000 of that came from sponsorship for Rio clothing from US manufacturer New Balance.

It also was confirmed yesterday that the contract for the supply of clothing to Ireland’s Olympic teams was now at an end and that the likelihood was that the OCI would be buying gear from manufacturers for next year’s Winter Games.

The OCI currently has no sponsorship arrangements.  Whether brands will be looking to re-engage in advance of the Tokyo Olympics will depend to a large extent on how the Olympic ‘spirit and values’ can be repaired in an Irish context and how the story of those values can be told in a credible and genuine fashion over the next 12 and 24 months.

Responsibility

Judge Moran raises the question of to whom the OCI owes its primary responsibility, whether it represents Irish sport and Ireland at the IOC or whether it is the representative of the IOC in Ireland.

It has traditionally taken a very strong stance against political interference but Keane answered our question on this yesterday by saying that the IOC was fully supportive of whatever steps needed to be taken to bring the organisation back to calmer waters in Ireland.

Committee

We will see within the next 36 hours how challenging that will be as the OCI has accepted an invitation to appear before the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport, chaired by Fine Gael’s Fergus O’Dowd.

Minister Ross will be there, as will the CEO John Treacy and Chair Kieran Mulvey from Sport Ireland.

An invitation has been issued to Pat Hickey to attend as well but that would be some turn up if he was to accept given his unwillingness to engage with Judge Moran on the basis of not wanting to prejudice a fair trial in Brazil.

This is an ongoing drama that still has many more scenes to be played out.  Not many for the foreseeable future will involve athletes but it is beholden on the new president, the new Executive and the Athlete’s Commission to ensure that at least one eye is kept on the future while the actions of the past remain to be fully unravelled.

Download and read the full Moran Report here.

Read the Reaction of the Olympic Council of Ireland

Read the Reaction of Minister Ross and Minister of State Griffin

Read the Reaction of Pat Hickey