A bonus scheme under which Rugby Football Union chief executive Bill Sweeney received an extra £358,000 in the same year the body recorded losses and cut jobs has been defended by a former senior official.
Genevieve Shor, former head of the RFU's pay committee, says she is “very comfortable” with the scheme.
With a pay rise of £742,000, Swinney will earn a total of £1.1m in the 2023-24 financial year.
The compensation packages he and other executives received sparked a public outcry, with calls for Sweeney's ouster.
Shore explained: “I feel the RFU board is incredibly professionally run and lives up to the standard of any FTSE 100 index. [a collection of the UK’s biggest publicly-listed companies] standard.
“I think if the executive team achieves the goals that are set for them, that's all you can ask for.”
Before she left the RFU in 2022, Shor was part of the board that established a program known as the Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP).
The LTIP is designed to retain senior executives during and after the Covid pandemic, with target-related bonuses at its conclusion.
“I'm very comfortable with all the governance that happened at that time, and the communication that happened,” said Shore, who is now chief executive of Women's Rugby Super League.
“What happens after 2022, obviously I don't know, but I feel like everything is set up and in a good place.
“I have worked for pay in several organizations.
“Our challenge was: Can we come out of Covid and keep this team through Covid?”
“LTIP did what it was supposed to do – the majority of the team stayed through that time period.
“The job of the executive team and board is to build succession planning and make sure you have a fairly smooth transition after LTIP.
“Either you reshape your team or you change it. That's always a careful decision for the executive team to make.”
Former RFU president Tom Elop, part of the RFU remuneration committee that approved Sweeney's latest bonus, resigned from his position in December.
His departure came after it was confirmed that there would be an independent review of the LTIP plan, which boosted the salaries of Sweeney and five other executives.
