LEAGUE OF IRELAND NEWS ROUND-UP:ANOTHER SHAREHOLDER in the company that owned Limerick Football Club last year has contacted The Irish Timesto confirm he was unaware a new company had applied for and received the FAI required licence for the club to compete in the Airtricity League.

Darren Hehir was part of the group that helped to set up Limerick 37 after the club then owned and run by Danny Drew in the city was refused a licence.

Although his shareholding in Limerick Thirty Seven FC Ltd is very small by comparison with those held by New Jersey-based lawyer Jack McCarthy and Pat O’Sullivan, Hehir does own the largest number of shares owned by any of the surviving group who helped to re-establish the club in 2007 with the support of local soccer organisations.

It was this company that was subsequently rescued by McCarthy a year later when he cleared debts of some €200,000 and subsequently met running costs of around €80,000. O’Sullivan began funding the club last summer when the American said he could no longer afford to do so.

On the basis of agreement he reached with McCarthy, O’Sullivan gradually came to own around one third of the holding company but this year applied for and received a licence to compete in the league through another company, Munster Football Club Ltd, in which he and a family member are the only two shareholders.

None of the shareholders in Limerick Thirty Seven Ltd appear to have been informed of this move and Hehir, who says he is in the process of initiating legal proceedings against McCarthy in relation to an agreement the two men had for the purchase of his shares, has confirmed the article in last Friday’s The Irish Times was “the first I heard of the whole thing”.

Both the FAI and O’Sullivan have insisted the transfer of one company to the other was done in accordance with company law but both have failed to answer detailed questions regarding the matter and the association has also failed to provide details of what the licensing committee did to ensure the new company was entitled to apply for the licence.

When asked about the matter last week, FAI chief executive John Delaney attempted to portray the matter as simply a dispute between McCarthy and O’Sullivan