Author: Ken Foxe

The Defence Forces found out by accident that the Taoiseach’s department wanted to charter an aircraft to fly Micheal Martin to Paris because officials did not trust the government Learjet would be fit to fly.

Internal records detail how officials in the Taoiseach’s office insisted on hiring a €2,000-per-hour aircraft because of the “absolute necessity” of the Taoiseach’s attendance at meetings in Paris and London in early March.

They said the government’s ageing €8 million Learjet could be kept available on standby if it were functional at the time Mr Martin wanted to travel.

In an email to the Department of Defence, Assistant Secretary to the Government Dermot Woods wrote: “We cannot be in doubt as to his attendance and any of the commercial aviation options too significantly reduce the essential flexibility he will need to have in the limited time availability.

“Therefore, will you arrange please, as the primary option for the three-leg travel, to secure option 5 (Luxaviation Citation CJ3 for 6 passengers) for this occasion? If the Learjet were functional it could act as a back-up if needed.”

Records from the Department of Defence also describe how news of leasing an aircraft was met with “some surprise” in the Air Corps who had readied the Learjet and a crew for the mission.

They only found out about the plan after one of the companies asked to provide a quote for a charter plane rang them directly to inquire about using Baldonnel Airport.

An email to the department from a senior officer said: “You might confirm has your Department taken a decision to contract a civil aircraft for a [ministerial air transport] operation from Casement Aerodrome, without informing this Headquarters or Defence Forces Headquarter, or is this request from the operator a contingency?”

The Air Corps also warned that the charter company were mistaken in thinking flying a private plane into a military airport would be straightforward.

They said they had concerns about a civilian aircraft coming through Baldonnel, especially around the “security precautions” for such a flight.

The Air Corps also warned there would be other difficulties around the supply of fuel and handling without a formal contract in place.

An email from Colonel Dave Corcoran said: “At this point, as requested by you last week, I can confirm that our advice is 1 Operations Wing is ready and able to conduct the MATS operation. Both Learjet and CASA aircraft are serviceable and available for that purpose.

“Please urgently confirm the Department of Defence intentions in relation to this civil flight as soon as possible and whether we should continue to plan the operation ourselves or not?”

In response, officials in the department said they wanted to be able to present several options to the Taoiseach for his journey.

One email said: “Given that the Taoiseach has either been let down on a couple of occasions by the Service recently or it has not met his requirements in relation to length of journey … the consultants Altea were asked to obtain quotes from four companies identified through their research.”

The message added: “What we’re all trying to ensure here is that the Taoiseach does not get let down again and every option has to be explored.”

The Central Bank has swapped more than €2.9 million worth of old punts over the last four years including more than €625,000 in coins.

All the largest exchanges last year were worth less than €10,000, according to records with the highest transaction dealing with £7,724, or €9,808 in ‘new money’.

Figures for 2021 show how just over €400,000 – or £317,124 in punts – was exchanged in notes last year, two decades after the euro first came into circulation.

Remarkably, a further €163,000 – or £128,458 in old pound coins and other loose change – were also exchanged by the Central Bank in 2021.

For some time now, Right to Know has been trying to identify the TDs and Senators who flouted public health guidelines in Leinster House and at the Convention Centre.

These incidents included:

• One Fianna Fáil TD who said he would sooner go to jail than wear a mask.
• A Labour party representative who was reported to be “aggressive” in telling a member of the compliance team they were not allowed in a meeting room.
• A male TD who secretly took photographs of Leinster House staff, and against whom no action was taken.
• Multiple reports of aggressive, dismissive, and abusive behaviour by TDs and Senators towards the compliance staff.

Redacted details of this have been published before but we were not happy with the response and believed that how named parliamentarians conduct themselves is a matter of significant public interest.

Our appeal to the Information Commissioner has unfortunately failed and the identities of all the above will remain secret.

And even though we are aware of who most of them are, they will have to remain unidentified because of Ireland’s draconian defamation laws.

In the decision, the Information Commissioner ruled that there was no public interest factor that outweighed the right to privacy of those named in these records.

Additional details were released however, including the party affiliation of certain TDs and Senators, along with specific units within the Oireachtas.

One point worthy of note is that the Oireachtas put a lot of emphasis on how their system of compliance for public health measures could be compromised if the names of those involved were disclosed.

However, long before this decision issued, that compliance system had effectively been dismantled.

The revised documents are published below.

Local authorities around the country spent almost €320,000 sending county councillors and officials abroad for St Patrick’s Day with one council accounting for nearly a third of the spending.

Limerick City and County Council spent around €100,000 sending no less than 27 politicians and officials to New York, Savannah, and London for the March 17 celebrations.

Another local authority – Wexford County Council – spent over €45,000 with councillors and staff jetting off to New York, Savannah, and the French city of Dunkirk.

Other councils were far more economical in comparison with just a single representative from Leitrim travelling to New York at a total cost of €1,937.

Galway City Council also kept costs to a minimum taking advantage of a free hotel stay in Seattle for their representatives for a total St Patrick’s Day bill of less than €5,000.

The authority responsible for running Dublin Airport repeatedly asked not to be hit with fines because of lengthy queues at the airport saying that it could compromise security.

In correspondence with the Commission for Aviation Regulation (CAR), DAA said their emphasis had to remain on safety, rather than waiting times.

And they said any over-emphasis on queuing times risked the potential for non-compliance with stringent EU rules on security.

In letters to CAR, the DAA wrote: “Our focus in security is to ensure that something does not get on an aircraft that shouldn’t, complying fully with all European and Irish regulations.

“While we do not want any passengers delayed coming through the screening process, our focus cannot prioritise this over passenger security and safety.”

Dublin Airport’s managing director Vincent Harrison added: “The re-introduction of fines increases the risk of focus being leaned too heavily on queue times, resulting in potential non-compliance with regulations.”

The DAA appealed for a ‘force majeure’ saying that the impact of Covid-19 had been so severe that there were no further reasonable steps they could take to improve waiting times.

This thread from Ken Foxe explains some of the background to how these records were released.

A county council said there was an “inherent inconsistency” in having to make available video and audio recordings of development plan meetings claiming the Data Protection Commission had advised them not to release them.

Meath County Council said a decision made by the Information Commissioner that they must release the recordings was something they were “still trying to rationalise” in internal emails.

Officials said it was difficult to understand how “two arms of the state [can] provide very different advice on the same records”.

In an email to the Department of Public Expenditure, a local authority official said: “It is very difficult for a public body, such as this council, to navigate these choppy waters.”

Meath County Council were told late last year they had to release the recordings of the development plan meetings, which had caused considerable controversy among councillors.

The council had originally said release of the tapes would involve the disclosure of personal information, which would be in breach of GDPR, and had proposed deleting them.

However, the Information Commissioner disagreed and ordered their release in a decision with far-reaching implications for other local authorities and public bodies.

The case had originally been taken by FP Logue Solicitors on behalf of a number of councillors in co Meath.

The National Ambulance Service (NAS) received almost 1,400 bogus or hoax calls last year with every single call having to be thoroughly vetted to see first if it’s an emergency.

Figures from the NAS reveal how the number of prank or bogus calls began to rise sharply in the second half of last year from just 76 in the month of January to 151 by year end in December.

There were also higher rates of bogus or hoax calls in months normally associated with school holidays including June (152) and July (153), although the August figure was 125.

The NAS said calls were categorised as a hoax where the caller terminated the conversation before providing sufficient detail to warrant sending an ambulance.

They also arose where the criteria for dispatching an ambulance were not met or in cases where a crew did respond but nothing was found.

The NAS said emergency call takers had expertise in sifting out bogus calls through set questions for verifying whether an ambulance was needed.

They said: “Other indications are the caller laughing (adult or child). The trained emergency call taker would escalate a suspected hoax call to the control supervisor who would assess, analyse and make a decision on the authenticity of the call.”

The NAS said they had received more than 363,000 calls last year, of which only a small fraction were hoax calls.

Detailed data on the number of emergency calls showed spikes in January, July, August, and December when at least 32,000 calls were made each month, or at least 1,000 per day.

Marauding gangs of youths on commuter train services, stones getting thrown at buses, and trams being removed from service because of malicious damage were the key issues in a security update for the board of the National Transport Authority.

However, an internal presentation said that despite perceptions, the overall trend for anti-social activity on public transport was in fact reducing.

Another “noticeable trend” was that most of the anti-social problems being caused typically involved fare evaders, according to a presentation.

Taoiseach Michéal Martin and his team were left “stranded” in Brussels after an Air Corps aircraft scheduled to fly them home went out of service at the last minute.

The incident caused acute embarrassment in the Department of Defence who were told they had twice in quick succession been unable to support the Taoiseach for strategically important EU and international engagements.

In emails, senior officials at the Taoiseach’s department said the latest breakdown marked a “further deterioration” in the service being provided for flying ministers around the globe.

A garda internal audit found that some officers were claiming overnight allowances for overnight trips that had not taken place.

Garda management had approved the practice instead of allowing those involved to claim for overtime, according to an internal audit that was carried out.

The practice came to light after an anonymous complaint saw garda college management carry out an initial review before asking internal auditors to do a full inquiry.

The audit of travel and subsistence payments at the Garda College also discovered other issues including the claiming of travel and subsistence expenses by members not stationed there without pre-approval.

Also discovered were claim forms that were not properly filled out while others had “vague descriptions” of the nature and location of duties carried out.

Internal auditors said they could provide only “limited” assurance on controls in place because of what they described as the “significance” of their findings.