A Holywood-based consultancy has been contracted by Stormont’s Department for Communities to carry out a human resources (HR) investigation at Sport NI.
Headstogether Consulting was awarded the £20,000 contract last month.
The Co Down firm’s clients include the NI Policing Board.
Documents published by Stormont’s Construction & Procurement Delivery (CPD) service state the contract was awarded for a “Sport NI HR Investigation”.
The Department for Communities said the contract was a matter for Sport NI.
A Sport NI spokesperson told The Irish News: “It would be inappropriate to comment on internal personnel matters.”
The publicly funding sport development body has been at the centre of numerous controversies over the past decade.
Its chief executive Antoinette McKeown was suspended in 2015 due to ‘leadership issues’ and was dismissed the following year.
Ms McKeown lodged an appeal and the Sport NI board subsequently overturned its dismissal decision.
She returned to work as Sport NI’s chief executive in July 2017 and later settled a fair employment dispute with the organisation in 2018.
The latest available accounts for Sport NI show Ms McKeown received a remuneration and pension package worth between £130,000 and £135,000 in the year to March 2023.
In 2020, a report by the Northern Ireland Audit Office found that the handling of governance issues arising within Sport NI had cost the public purse an estimated £1.5 million.
The report found that there was a serious breakdown in relationships at the top of the organisation.
Earlier this year, Sport NI admitted it had underspent its budget in each of the past two years, returning £1m to DfC.
The organisation’s director of sport Richard Archibald has been acting as interim-CEO of the organisation in recent months.