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It seems anger at the grassroots level of the IFA is even stronger in the wake of Con Lucey's report than it was when the pay scandal first erupted. At meetings held on Thursday 17 December, IFA Limerick and IFA Kilkenny joined IFA Galway in calling for the resignation of the entire IFA executive board. The board currently comprises deputy president Tim O'Leary, treasurer and new interim president Jer Bergin, and the four regional chairmen James McCarthy, James Murphy, Bert Stewart and Tom Turley.
Limerick IFA passed a motion calling for executive board "to do the honourable thing and stand now at the next executive council meeting" on 5 January. Limerick had also called for the resignation of the board prior to Con Lucey's report.
On Thursday Limerick also called for all executive council meeting votes to be public and not private from here on in.
Chairman Aidan Gleeson said the meeting was "angry" and farmers were "not happy with the events of the week".
At a meeting in the Newpark Hotel in Kilkenny on the same night, over 80 members gathered to discuss the fallout from Con Lucey's report. A motion for the executive board to resign passed when 40 members voted for the resignation, 29 members voted against it and the rest abstained.
Kilkenny IFA had not called for the resignation of the board prior to Lucey's report, voting instead to wait for the IFA's former chief economist's review of the association.
A call for Jer Bergin, the IFA’s new national chairperson and official spokesman, to step down was then passed by a marginal increase on the first motion. It seems Bergin's opposition to the payment of the bonus and the IFA Telecom fees paid to former general secretary Pat Smith in 2014 and 2015, the details of which are contained in Lucey's report, is not enough to exonerate him in the eyes of the IFA's grassroots members.
County chairman John Bambrick said there was "a lot of anger at the meeting", especially in relation to the retirement packages given to former presidents of the association.
He said the election of Jer Bergin as a sort of interim president and acting spokesperson "didn't fly" with the membership. "They want new faces on the board now," he said.
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