The FAI's independent chairman Roy Barrett has vowed that "openness and transparency" will be central to the organisation after a new board was voted into office, including a return to the FAI for former player Packie Bonner to end his decade-long exile from the association. 

And Bonner, added to the board as one of the new independent directors, admits there were "lost years" in the time he was frozen out at FAI level.

"Irish football has never been far from my mind over the last ten years. It’s early in the new regime but it’s important to be positive and constructive. There’s a great deal of lost time to be recovered, so as a non-executive Independent Director, I want to provide whatever guidance and oversight I can in the years ahead," Bonner said in a statement issued by the FAI.

The incumbents as FAI president (Gerry McAnaney) and vice-president (Paul Cooke) both won in elections at an Extraordinary General Meeting, where the 141-member General Assembly cast votes. Re-elected after an initial 15-month spell as president, McAnaney said: "It has been a torrid time for everyone but I am absolutely delighted".

McAnaney beat off the challenge from Dave Moran while Cooke was elected ahead of Barbara Scully though there was a busy weekend of electioneering, with a missive from Barrett on the eve of the election where he asked delegates to avoid bloc voting to get their favoured candidates onto the board.

McAnaney and Cooke retain their positions as president and vice-president, while existing board members Roy Barrett, John Finnegan, Catherine Guy, Liz Joyce, Joseph O’Brien, Richard Shakespeare and Robert Watt were ratified for a new term.

Packie Bonner and Gary Twohig came onto the board along with Tom Browne, from the SFAI. Martin Heraghty, Ursula Scully and Dave Moran leave their seats on the board.

Barrett said the new board would oversee a more democratic FAI. "I certainly hope so," he said.

"We have all the structures there to enable it. Ultimately it will depend on people’s attitudes and behaviours and the culture within the organisation generally.

"As a board we are committed to ensure there is transparency and people can feel their opinions and their views are listened to. That is how we sought to evolve over the 15 months I have been here.

"We have a new board now formed and that will be the key objective of that board, to ensure that level of transparency and openness is in everything we do."

Barrett defended his decision to issue a circular to delegates ahead of the voting, as he was concerned that affiliates were being asked to vote en bloc instead, saying: "I find this type of behaviour objectionable and completely at odds with what the vast majority of members want our organisation to look like in the future".

At a media conference on Sunday, Barrett said: "In the correspondence I sent to members I didn’t refer to bloc voting, but the underlying premise of the Assembly and the objectives for it was that it was going to be more democratic, more representative of all parts of the game.

"Each delegate represented an individual member and all I wanted to ensure is each of the delegates exercised that franchise freely in whichever way they wanted to do it."