Mr Fran Rooney resigned last night as chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). Negotiations between representatives of Mr Rooney and the FAI ended with a financial settlement that severs the links between the 46-year-old former Baltimore Technologies chief and Irish football's governing body with immediate effect.
The agreement, which will be confirmed at a press conference today, is reported to have been concluded in a car-park of the UCD campus at Belfield. It brings to a conclusion the crisis that had threatened to paralyse the association and may still result in it being deprived of a substantial portion of its agreed Sports Council funding for the current year.
Mr Rooney is said to have initiated talks aimed at facilitating his departure in the wake of last Friday's meeting of the organisation's council where only three of the 60-strong body actually voted in support of him.
Mr Rooney was initially hired by the association on a six-month rolling contract. The value of his salary and benefits package was raised earlier this year to roughly €350,000. On that basis the minimum involved in his settlement would be expected to be some €175,000, although it is possible that the association paid more in order to secure a swift and clean end to the saga.
Mr Rooney only joined the association in May of last year but had recently been the subject of a series of letters of complaint from senior staff and reports of widespread dissatisfaction over his management style within Merrion Square.
