Author: Ken Foxe

A restaurant bill of €123.75, spending of €36,946 on travel, and more than €140,000 in costs for excavation of a former home were among the costs run up by the Mother and Baby Home Commission over the past two years.

Legal costs of more than €380,000, as well as €263,000 in fees and expenses for commissioners and the inquiry’s confidential committee, were also incurred.

A detailed breakdown of more than €3.69 million in costs including staff salaries paid out during 2019 and 2020 also reveals a near half a million euro spend on consultancy projects and services.

A database of expenditure – released under FOI – provides the most detailed glimpse yet at costs involved in the controversial Commission, which has cost the state at least €13.5 million.

The Department of Children had originally refused to release the breakdown of costs. However, that was appealed to the Information Commissioner by transparency group Right to Know and the data was subsequently provided.

The Department of Agriculture spent more than four months trying to convince public health authorities of the merits of introducing rapid Covid-19 testing for workers at meat processing plants.

However, they were met with “negative sentiments” and a “continued unexplained reluctance” to endorse their plans to try and tackle outbreaks in the meat industry, according to internal records.

The Department had been involved in a pilot study of a factory last year, which found particularly high risks of infection in areas where meat was cut.

It discovered that 60 of the 100 workers who tested positive for Covid-19 had been working shifts in the boning hall where chilled air was being recirculated to keep conditions cool for food hygiene reasons.

As part of its recommendations, the report said the possibility of introducing rapid testing for meat processing plants should be considered.

Internal records reveal how the department began writing to the HSE as last September recommending “mass testing of the workforce in food businesses”.

Closing down a runway at Dublin’s Airport which is used to deal with problem wind conditions could cost airlines and passenger up to €48 million per year, according to an official report.

The Commission for Aviation Regulation were asked by the Department of Transport to look at the impact of closing the airport’s “crosswind runway” and whether climate change would have an impact on its use.

The report also examined how other major international airports managed without such a runway and if there were particular weather conditions in Dublin that made it essential.

It found that closure could lead to 1,468 and 2,251 flights not being able to operate annually, which made up around 0.5% to 0.8% of flights in a sample schedule used.

The report said taking into account flight diversions for airlines and the direct cost to passengers in lost time, the annual costs would be between €29 and €48 million.

This report was released on foot of a decision by the Information Commissioner. Just as an FYI, this case was not taken by Right to Know.

Almost fifty cases a month were logged of ambulances turning up over an hour after they were first called to a life-threatening event, according to National Ambulance Service records.

In two cases – both in Co Cork – the ambulance took over two hours to get there; once because of the distance involved, and once due to a road having been blocked by fallen trees.

Detailed data from the National Ambulance Service (NAS) also show how response performance suffered as Ireland began to grapple with the Christmas wave of Covid-19 infection.

Long delays were most common in Cork due to the sheer size of the county with one in six of the over one-hour-long waits recorded in the county.

The records cover the second half of last year with 282 cases – or 47 a month – where patients were waiting at least sixty minutes for an ambulance to arrive at their location.

The National Ambulance Service said however, that this represented just a small fraction from the 81,718 highest priority calls they had received during that time.

Ireland’s corporate enforcer said it would need a major increase in manpower to deal with “very well-resourced” white-collar suspects, technological advances that the law struggles to keep up with, and increased insolvency cases from the pandemic’s fallout.

The Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) is to be set up as a stand-alone agency, which had been compared to an “Irish version of the FBI” by then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar according to internal records.

A detailed submission to the Department of Enterprise described how the ODCE had in recent years been working on crime and wrongdoing at the “more serious end of the spectrum”.

These investigations were resource intensive and getting ever more complex according to the assessment, which was prepared by ODCE Director Ian Drennan.

He warned of technological advances that legislation “is unable to keep pace with”, and the number of different parties routinely involved in investigations as both witnesses and suspects.

Mr Drennan said there was a growing “propensity” for targets to take legal cases relating to things like privilege or privacy before the civil courts.

He also said, “many of the persons/entities with which the ODCE has to engage are very well resourced – as are their professional advisors”.

An Bord Pleanála told the government they had “significantly under-estimated” just how much work would be involved in dealing with applications under the controversial Strategic Housing Application process.

The planning board said they had assigned just six inspectors to the process at first, but that this had more than doubled under the weight of work required.

It said they now needed sixteen extra staff to manage their workload in a submission to the Department of Public Expenditure-led review of the National Development Plan.

An Bord Pleanála said a major increase in manpower would be needed to deal with the “predicted surge in applications and the increased complexity of cases that come before us”.

On Strategic Housing Development (SHD), they said they expected a significant rise in pre-application requests and applications over the next twelve to eighteen months.

The Irish Prison Service (IPS) asked Facebook to review a controversial online group for serving and former prison officers saying they had concerns about a risk “to the privacy of people in our custody”.

Emails to the social media giant reveal how the Prison Service flagged three offensive posts and a video upload from the page “Irish Jailers, Warders, and Buckets”.

Facebook said it appeared as if some of the offending posts had been removed but that one – which made a reference to travellers – did not “violate [Facebook] community standards”.

The Irish Prison Service also flagged concerns over video footage which they understood had at one stage appeared on the group.

An email to Facebook said: “It is also alleged that a video that appears to be shot within an Irish prison has been uploaded to the page and apparently shows a prisoner in a cell with some sort of ‘leash’ around his neck.

“I would be grateful for a review of these posts as they also pose a potential risk to the privacy of people in our custody,” said one email.

The number of jobs being supported through a lucrative tax relief scheme for highly paid multinational executives has “fallen sharply” according to an internal briefing for the finance minister.

The cost to the taxpayer had also more than trebled to €73,000 for each job that was being supported, which was described by officials as a “cause for concern”.

The submission – prepared for Minister Paschal Donohoe last autumn – said the cost per job through the Special Assignee Relief Programme (SARP) had been just €23,000 in 2017, or less than a third of the rate in 2018.

Making comparisons with figures from years prior to that were “even less flattering” according to the Department of Finance document, which was released under FOI.

The scheme allows generous tax relief for executives moving to Ireland and was at one stage being used for aggressive “advanced tax planning” by some companies.

Eighteen people earning between €1 and €10 million had benefitted from the scheme in a single year, which lead to the introduction of a €1 million income cap in 2019.

A court contract for filing official records was supposed to deliver more than €80,000 in yearly savings but ended up costing the taxpayer an extra 33% annually.

A highly critical internal audit also found the Courts Service had been accidentally overcharged for two years, did not factor in delivery and collection fees, and may have awarded the contract to the wrong company.

It said this risked “legal and reputational consequences” and that if the Courts Service had fully understood the costs involved, the successful company would not have been awarded the contract in the first place.

The internal audit identified several “high risks” saying prices quoted in a tender document had not ultimately applied and “expected financial savings [were] not realised”.

It also said there was a lack of oversight and reporting within the Courts Service on the contract performance with accidental overcharging not identified for more than two years.

The audit also warned of potential breaches of data protection law and the National Archives Act because of a lack of consistent Courts Service policy on retention of records.

Horse Racing Ireland management were told CCTV would not have been a “silver bullet” in a doping controversy but that it would “distort [their] message” if it was not addressed.

They were also told they needed to work on “honing those key messages” in dealing with the fallout from a high-profile nobbling case.

The horse Viking Hoard had tested positive for a fast-acting sedative at over 100 times the screening limit as part of an elaborate betting sting that ended up being linked back to a mystery individual with connections to match fixing.

The horse’s trainer Charles Byrnes was suspended for six months for leaving the horse unattended but has always insisted he had nothing to do with what transpired.

Records from Horse Racing Ireland show how the state agency used high-profile PR firm Teneo to deal with the controversy as senior officials were given mock interviews to “stress-test answers” they would give in media appearances.