The Story

Department of Taoiseach expenditure data 2010

Gavin Sheridan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:31:31 +0000

Late last year I asked for the follow information from the Department of the Taoiseach:

1) A ‘datadump’, (ie a copy/export of) the Oracle financial management system in use by the Department covering the time period for 2010. This datadump should contain data relating only to the following subheads:

Travel and subsistence (A2)
Training and development and incidental expenses (A3)
Postal and Telecommunications services (A4)
Office equipment and external IT services (A5)
Office premises expenses (A6)
Consultancy services and value for money and policy reviews (A7)
National economic and social (B)
Commemoration initiatives (C)
Tribunal of Inquiry (Payments to Messrs CJ Haughey and M Lowry) (D)

This should include the following column heads (ie fields)
Payment date; Subhead item; Cost Centre; Vendor Name; Invoice number; Line description; Amount.

Subhead A1 covers salary data, which did not form part of this request. While the data was released in a physical hard copy format (yes printed out and posted to me), the total sum of non-salary expenditure should amount to €6.465m. Because I have not converted the documents into spreadsheets, and because some lines are entirely blacked out, I have not been able to perform a SUM calculation on the spreadsheets.

The data contains spending of all types, including telephones, post, lunches, travel, bus fares, road tolls, flights, hotels, taxis, ferries, catering, photography, books, newspapers, bank charges, couriers, tea/coffee, legal charges, uniform cleaning, footwear, mobile phones, photocopying, office equipment, stationery, cleaning, cleaning supplies, and more.

Update: NAMA case to go ahead

Gavin Sheridan — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:20:19 +0000

In a somewhat disappointing turn of events, the Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information has withdrawn from High Court action between itself and the National Asset Management Agency. However the case between it and Anglo Irish Bank (IBRC) continues, and is still listed for hearing in the High Court on January 31st.

Without going into the long (and boring to many people) details of the case, it seems as though NAMA argued that because I had narrowed the scope of my request over half way through the process, this meant I had effectively withdrawn my request. But actually I narrowed the scope of my request in the hope of expediting the process, since at that stage it had lasted 18 months. At no point did I withdraw it. But it was arguable, and lawyers do love to argue (and in this case at a large financial cost to the public). Since I am not the one involved in the case (and indeed was never a notice party to it) it is not my call to withdraw the original Decision, but rather that of the Commissioner.

However, the crux of the issue remains and I hope the Anglo case resolves it.

The core issue is how to read the Access to Information on the Environment (AIE) Regulations 2007. And essentially that comes down to what “and includes” means in statutory interpretation. This question should be answered in the Anglo Irish Bank case, and any ruling that comes from it will affect NAMA (and indeed a range of other public authorities/bodies).

~~It is a relatively minor setback for greater transparency, but overall the fight continues both for more accountable institutions and for legal clarity.~~

Update: It appears the situation changed today. The case will proceed on May 17th, 2012.

Dunne & Maxwell Limited and yourmoney.ie

Gavin Sheridan — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:27:53 +0000

I see the Central Bank has sent letters out to customers who are involved with the website yourmoney.ie. The company behind yourmoney.ie is called Dunne & Maxwell Limited, a company previously called Zaynabi Limited.

One of the main shareholders in Dunne & Maxwell according to the 2009 B1 Certificate is Adam Deering, with a registered address in Cheshire, UK. Other shareholders are people from Cork – Derek Murphy and Jerry Curtis. Jerry Curtis resigned as a director of the company in late 2009.

This is the company’s only B1 certificate. No accounts are available. The company also is listed for strike-off.

Of course publishing this information does not imply wrongdoing on the part of the above-named individuals, I am simply publishing documents relating to the company in question.

I did wonder though if it was the same Adam Deering who celebrated his 30th birthday last year. Hmm.

The Glackin Report – complete

Gavin Sheridan — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:53:32 +0000

This is the complete final report of the Chestvale Properties and Hoddle Investments Report, also known as the Glackin Report. It was an investigation in 1993 into the Johnston Mooney & O’Brien / Telecom Eireann scandal by solicitor John Glackin.

Overtime pay in acute hospitals

Gavin Sheridan — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:10:57 +0000

Thanks to Jennifer Hough over at the Irish Examiner comes this data relating to overtime pay at the HSE. You can read her story here. She wrote:

Overtime paid to HSE registrars is still costing over €100 million a year, while 15 hospital doctors around the country earned more than €100,000 in overtime alone last year. In the years since the recession hit — from 2009 to the first half of 2011 — €276.2m has been paid to registrars in overtime.

Compared to €219m for 2008 alone, considerable savings have been achieved, but the overtime bill is still topping €100m annually.

One registrar in the west earned €135,100 in overtime last year on top of a salary of at least €70,000. Other top overtime earners in 2010 were: a registrar in HSE South who got €130,098; one in the south who got €123,199 on top of pay; and a registrar in the north-east who received €120,106 in overtime.

Here is one table of data that Jennifer refers to:

And other data with the request:

ECB refuses access to Trichet/Lenihan bailout letter

Gavin Sheridan — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:34:43 +0000

The European Central Bank has refused to release a letter sent to former Finance Minister Brian Lenihan in November 2010, stating that the release of the letter’s contents would “undermine the protection of the public interest as regards the monetary policy of the Union and as regards the stability of the financial system in a Member State”. I submitted a request to the ECB for all letters sent to Brian Lenihan or his office in November 2010.

In April last year the contents of an interview between Dan O’Brien of the Irish Times and the late Brian Lenihan were published, in which Lenihan said Ireland had been “bounced” into the EU/IMF bailout and that the first hard indication he had of the ECB wanting Ireland to accept a bailout came in a letter he received from the head of the bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, on November 12. In the letter, according to Mr Lenihan, Mr Trichet “raised the question about whether Ireland would be participating in a programme at that stage”.

In its decision not to release the letter, the ECB said:

The letter, dated 19 November 2010, is a strictly confidential communication between the ECB President and the Irish Minister of Finance and concerns measures addressing the extraordinarily severe and difficult situation of the Irish financial sector and their repercussions on the integrity of the euro area monetary policy and the stability of the Irish financial sector.

Furthermore the letter states:

The ECB must be in a position to convey pertinent and candid messages to European and national authorities in the manner judged to be the most effective to serve the public interest as regards the fulfilment of its mandate. If required and in the best interest of the public also effective informal and confidential communication must be possible and should not be undermined by the prospect of publicity.

In this case, the confidential communication was aimed at discussing measures conducive to protecting the effectiveness and integrity of the ECB’s monetary policy and fostering an environment that ultimately contribute to restoring confidence among investors in the overall solvency and sustainability of the Irish financial sector and markets, which, in turn, is of overriding importance for the smooth conduct of monetary policy.

We should like to draw your attention to the fact that in line with Article 10 of the ECB Decision on public access to ECB documents “documents released shall not be reproduced or exploited for commercial purposes without the ECB’s prior specific authorisation. The ECB may withhold such authorisation without stating reasons.”

I intend appealing this decision.

Here is the letter, along with the only other letter received by Brian Lenihan in November 2010:

Anglo Irish/INBS restructuring plan 2011-2020

Gavin Sheridan — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:47:22 +0000

TheStory.ie has obtained a confidential plan submitted by Anglo Irish Bank/Irish Nationwide to the European Commission, which was put together by a working group from the Department of Finance, the NTMA, the Central Bank, Anglo and INBS.

The plan, dated January 31, 2011 was submitted to the European Commission for approval and was guided by the agreement reached between the Irish authorities, the EU, the IMF and ECB in November 2010. It outlines in detail the workout plan for the IBRC entity from now until 2020, under two headline scenarios – a base and stress scenario.

Under the the base scenario, IBRC says it could lose €3.5bn between 2011 and 2020, while under the stress scenario it could lose €8.1 billion. The bulk of these losses would be incurred in 2011/2012. It projects a loss of at least €400m between 2016 and 2020.

IBRC’s residential loan book will be prepared for eventual sale, probably in 2015. A 30% haircut is expected in the stress scenario leading to a loss to the taxpayer of €300 million.

Under a stress scenario outlined by the bank, IBRC will need an additional €3.2bn of equity capital which will be ‘drip fed’ across the plan period. The injections are required to keep an 8% total capital ratio. This drip feeding will be done in tranches of €1.7bn, €1.3bn, €0.01bn, €0.04bn and €0.2bn.

IBRC will be reliant on the Central Bank/ELA funding for the duration of the plan, right up to 2020. IBRC will need €36.7bn funding from the CBI/ELA by 2015 and €15.9bn by 2019 under the base case.

IBRC had to fund €18bn of non-Euro exposure (out of €49bn total from CBI/ELA), which was 60% sterling and 40% US dollar

The total cost to the taxpayer for IBRC under the stress case is estimated at €35.8bn (this includes INBS and Anglo remember).

Operating costs for IBRC were €405m in 2010 (Anglo and INBS before they were merged), with projections for operating costs of between €217m and €250m in 2012. The largest savings are expected from staff reductions of 39% to 1,075. Wealth management will be sold or wound down over a period of five years.

I intend releasing the full 66 page plan on TheStory.ie.

HSE West fixed assets register

Gavin Sheridan — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:31:02 +0000

Part of an ongoing process. This is the fixed assets register of HSE West for the year 2010.

The total value of assets at HSE West for 2010 was put at €467,973,306.65. This is broken down as:

€338,838,557.72 Buildings
€76,914,547.76 Land
€494,847.78 Vehicles
€11,307,286.82 WIP
€40,418,066.57 Equipment

Here is the full dataset.

Howlin’s compromise on pay rejected by the Taoiseach

Ken Foxe — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:48:30 +0000

Brendan Howlin, the Minister responsible for overseeing a pay cap for special advisers, tried repeatedly to come to a compromise agreement on the pay of Ciaran Conlon.

The negotiations over the bumper salary of €127,000 that was finally set out for Mr Conlon show that Brendan Howlin had serious concerns about it and did not believe it could be justified under any circumstances.

He also said it would set a poor example and would provoke other Ministers into seeking higher pay for their advisers, or ask for salaries – that were already agreed – to be renegotiated.

The new emails, obtained from the Department of Public Enterprise, show that the Department of the Taoiseach repeatedly intervened in the process and would not accept a compromise of ca €115,000, which Howlin had pleaded with them to accept.

It would have presented a face-saving solution to the sensitive problem and was still, as Mr Howlin himself pointed out, a 25% increase on the original offer. In the end, he caved in following a demand that came directly from the Taoiseach [see below post].

Some of the documents on which this are based are posted here, with the more important exchanges coming towards the end.

A lengthy story that I wrote, which outlines it in further detail, is available here:

These new emails, now released by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, should, to my mind, have already been released under an FoI request that was submitted to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation about the same matter.

That they were not is suspicious. The decision on their release is currently being appealed and will in due course be made known to the Information Commissioner.

Enda Kenny overruled two Ministers to give €35,000 pay rise

Ken Foxe — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:01:40 +0000

Taoiseach Enda Kenny personally intervened to have a special adviser awarded a salary of €127,000, 37 per cent more than had been recommended.

These are some of the Department of Enterprise communications, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, which outline the chain of events leading to the decision.

After the general election, Ciaran Conlon was appointed as an adviser to Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton. Under new guidelines set out by the Department of Finance, a salary cap had been put in place for such positions, ranging from around €80,000 to €92,000 per year. It appears from the emails however, that Mr Conlon had already been promised an annual wage of €127,000.

A difficulty arose when both Minister for Public Expenditure Reform Brendan Howlin and Finance Minister Michael Noonan refused to grant this higher salary. A memo in the Department of Enterprise explained that they were willing to pay him at the higher end of the scale, approving a pay level of €92,000.

Ciaran Conlon, a former communications chief with Fine Gael, was not happy with this, writing in an email: ‘This is getting ridiculous. The minister sent over a memo on this issue weeks ago. This has been passed at the very highest level in Government Buildings.’

Enda Kenny then intervened with his private secretary writing to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and expressing the Taoiseach’s wish for a salary of €127,000. The Department caved in and a new contract for Mr Conlon was drawn up.

The story I wrote in this week’s Mail on Sunday outlines what happened in more detail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069731/How-Irish-PM-ordered-officials-break-salary-cap-old-friend-PR-adviser.html

Here are the documents: