Author: Ken Foxe

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe was advised to highlight the “wisdom” of imposing a salary cap on a controversial tax relief scheme even though the cap had been lifted just a few years before by his predecessor Michael Noonan.

Mr Donohoe had announced a €1 million cap for the Special Assignee Relief Programme (SARP) in 2018, a controversial scheme that provides generous tax benefits for multinational staff moving to Ireland.

However, a cap was simply being reintroduced having been abolished by Mr Donohoe’s party colleague, the then Finance Minister Michael Noonan in 2015.

Its removal had led to “significant unanticipated costs” for the taxpayer and the use of the scheme by executives on multi-million salaries for aggressive “advance tax planning”.

A briefing for Minister Paschal Donohoe last summer on the latest data from the Special Assignee Relief Programme (SARP) said the reintroduction of a cap had led to a significant improvement in how much it cost to support jobs under the scheme.

It said there had been a decrease in the cost for each job supported by the scheme to €44,000 in the latest annual figures, compared to €73,000 the year before.

In a briefing for the minister, department officials said the scheme was likely to be the subject of commentary from opposition politicians.

The submission said: “In such an event, the point can be made that the data in the Revenue report serves to reinforce the wisdom of the decision to impose the salary cap in Finance Bill 2018.”

Government ministers and politicians from the three main political parties were among those reported to have breached public-health guidelines in Leinster House and the Convention Centre.

In one incident, a minister was dismissive of the compliance staff who had asked a large group of TDs to keep their distance.

A log of the complaint said: “I approached Minister [redacted] regarding this who pointed at her colleagues and told me jokingly it was them I needed to police.

“I told her that we were only two people and that we needed their help in managing this.”

That complaint detailed how there had been a significant group of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael ministers, along with backbenchers, gathered too closely together in the Convention Centre on 7 October 2020.

An email said: “In total, we visited this area over eight times in the half hour, with at least four verbal interactions asking them to separate.

“It was clear in some cases, those seated had moved their tables and chairs out of line to be closer to each other. This was evident between Minister [redacted] and Minister [redacted] although we couldn’t be certain which of them had done the moving.”

In another reported incident, a member of Sinn Féin was part a group of TDs who were told to leave greater distance between each other on an escalator in the Convention Centre.

According to an Oireachtas log from October 13 last year, the Sinn Féin member was alleged to have said: “Sure what difference does it make. We haven’t got it.”

They then added: “We’ve all had it at this stage. It’s been here since Christmas.”

The Information Commissioner has ruled however, that the identities of the politicians should not be disclosed.

In a decision, they said that the right to know of the public did not outweigh the right to privacy of the elected representatives involved.

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Horse racing bosses tried to shut down the operation of private drones at Irish racecourses through complaints to gardaí, the Data Protection Commission, and even the Irish Aviation Authority.

However, internal records reveal how Horse Racing Ireland concluded there was little that could be done except seeking a change in the law.

Drones are being used routinely around Irish racecourses to take advantage of a short time lag between broadcast footage of events and the action on the ground.

Even this small delay allows gamblers take advantage of changes to so-called “in-running” betting odds, if say a horse begins to struggle, jumps awkwardly, or falls.

Internal records detail how Horse Racing Ireland were in touch with gardaí in Naas Garda Station last year, who were trying to make “life difficult” for those involved in the filming.

Tax income from cigarettes and tobacco had remained steady no matter how often the price increased in the budget, according to Department of Finance records.

A submission prepared for Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe also suggested a decline in airline travel had led to an increased tax haul from tobacco sales throughout this year.

It said that a 50-cent increase on the price of a pack of cigarettes had now been implemented six years in a row, with Minister Donohoe opting for yet another price hike in October’s budget.

The submission said tobacco excise receipts had been €1.2 billion last year and were forecast to rise to €1.262 billion for the entirety of 2021.

“This suggests a continuation of a longer-term trend of tobacco excise receipts remaining stable at around €1.1 billion per annum, with the effect of rate increases balanced out by the effect of volume reductions,” it said.

The submission also speculated that revenue from cigarette taxes had risen because of the pandemic due to lower levels of airline travel.

Normally, up to 10% of cigarettes consumed each year are brought in from EU member states that have much lower taxes and prices.

Also available in this upload are discussion on tobacco duties, and submissions on alcohol and carbon taxes.

The Defence Forces have investigated more than 140 allegations of sexual abuse, including 20 cases which involved a member of the military and a minor.

A report prepared by military authorities for Minister Simon Coveney disclosed that there have been 146 investigations by military police into alleged sex crimes over the past four decades.

However, some of these were later found to relate to “common assault” and consensual acts, according to the report, which was marked with a “restricted” status by the Defence Forces.

Of the 146 reports, 127 took place in Ireland and were dealt with by military police with 52 of those cases referred onwards to gardaí for investigation.

Another seven of them took place overseas where An Garda Síochána had no jurisdiction and they had to be dealt with under military law.

There were a further twelve cases that were found not to involve Defence Forces personnel but where there was a “military connection”, for example the location of the alleged crime.

Minister Coveney was told that there had been a significant fall in the number of cases over the past decades with 54 cases in the 1980s, 35 in the 1990s, 20 in the 2000s, and 17 in the 2010s.

Only a single case has been reported so far this decade with the report saying a change in “culture” within the Defence Forces and “increased external societal awareness” were a factor in the decline.

The report said: “[This] has altered the quantity, nature and extent of MP [military police] investigations into alleged offences with circumstances concerning a sexual nature.”

A breakdown of the 127 incidents, which were deemed to required investigation, disclosed that 19 of them related to rape allegations, with a further 62 cases of indecent or sexual assault.

There were six cases of sexual harassment investigated, ten cases of indecent exposure, and thirty cases reported of inappropriate behaviour.

The report said: “All trends have decreased significantly over time, apart from a slight increase in ‘inappropriate behaviour’ during [the] 2010s.”

Of the cases deemed sexual offences, twenty involved at least one minor, according to the report.

These involved four allegations of rape, nine of indecent or sexual assault, three cases of indecent exposure, and four reports of inappropriate behaviour.

An ambulance turned up to a life-threatening event more than an hour after being called on more than 300 occasions over the first six months of the year.

In two cases – both in the west of Ireland – there was a more than two-hour delay in paramedics arriving, according to records released by the National Ambulance Service.

Delays were most pronounced in Wexford, Cork, and Kerry, with well over a third of all the sixty-minute plus response times recorded in just those three counties.

A breakdown of the reasons given for excessive delays in ambulance response time reveals that in 249 cases, the very long distance involved was to blame.

There were also 34 cases where the ambulance got stood down because an even more pressing emergency had occurred.

Two cases of ambulances breaking down en route were reported while in another incident there was a “potential violent scene,” and the paramedics were waiting for garda support.

Other reasons given for lengthy delays in reaching patients included bad weather conditions, decontaminating an ambulance, and problems with accurate directions.

A cleaned (by us) version of the data available below, and the original release letter below that.

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Bed clothes stained with blood, syringes and drug paraphernalia scattered everywhere, and claims of bullying and assault were among the formal complaints lodged by residents of homeless accommodation.

A total of 68 formal complaints have been logged this year in the Dublin region including problems with a lack of social distancing, residents being locked out of their own rooms, and one person who claimed they were not let leave their centre to attend a work appointment.

There was an average of around six complaints flagged each month, according to records that were released by the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive.

In one case in in May, a resident at one homeless provider said they could no longer stay there with bed linen “covered in blood” and a dirty wash area.

The following month, another homeless person said her mattress was stained and that she was being bullied by other residents.

An Excel sheet of the log available here and a PDF below.

The board of Nama said it was “disappointing” they wouldn’t be allowed to pay staff bonuses after the Minister for Finance warned against it.

The agency halted performance-related pay for last year after being told by Paschal Donohoe that running a compulsory redundancy programme at the same time as paying bonuses would not be a “good mix”.

Internal records detail how the board believed this was “disappointing particularly” at a time when they were struggling to keep key staff.

They believed the suspension of payments was a “major risk” to the organisation but that they could not afford to lose the support of the finance minister, according to private session board minutes that were released under FOI.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe was warned that any plan to tax farmland which was zoned for housing development was likely to be “politically sensitive”.

Internal Department of Finance records describe how the Department of Housing wanted to exclude agricultural land – when it had been later rezoned for redevelopment or regeneration – from the government’s plan for a zoned land tax.

However, both the Revenue and Department of Finance had “significant reservations” about this and how it might exclude badly needed development land.

They said any attempt to exclude certain agricultural land from the plan could “undermine the whole proposal” in a submission prepared for Minister Paschal Donohoe.

The National Museum wants to carry out an examination of its collections to flag items that have a “violent colonial context” or are “especially culturally sensitive”.

The museum said significant elements of its vast collection would never be collected today and that major work needed to be done to determine the history and provenance of items.

However, their efforts have been slowed by a lack of qualified staff and difficulties in actually accessing parts of their enormous collections, according to internal records.

The National Museum said they now planned to hire a curator early next year to begin the process of finding out the details of how items were first acquired.

However, internal records said this was likely to be a “long and complex task”.