Author: Mark Coughlan

Diary of Brian Lenihan in spreadsheet format

Spreadsheet – Diary, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan Sept 1 2008, April 30 2009 inclusive.

The official diary of the Minister for Finance displayed in a spreadsheet for easy reading. It covers the period between September 1st 2008 and April 30 2009, including the bank guarantee. Originally posted here in PDF format. You can download the spreadsheet document for your own records by clicking File > Download As > Excel/Text.

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Gav is traveling through the middle-east at the moment (bringing down various governments there as required by his membership of the New World Order – don’t bother commenting, I’ve admitted it, you know who you are) and I’m working on stories which I can’t say much about yet (yes, due to membership of the Illuminati) so it’ll be more quiet than normal ’round here for the next week or so. We’re talking about two posts between Mondays and Fridays.

Normality will soon return, be assured, there are things in the pipeline.

Props to Steve White for moving this info from a PDF to a spreadsheet, he also informs us that April and March are incorrectly ordered in the PDF supplied by the department, you might want to note that if you have taken a copy of the original.

Visualised: Liam Carroll's corporate structure

Once again, credit to Steve White, the go-to guy for building with free-to-use visualisation tools. We give him the data, he makes it digestible.

It’s still – as every business hack will tell you – “labyrinthine”, but the visualisation makes it a little easier to understand.

Note: This was built using the info put together by Gavin for this post, it’s not all Carroll’s companies, just those under the various Morston banners…

Fáscinating…

Thursday’s Irish Times, Business pages, in the “In Short” sidebar, down the bottom.

Abbott Lodge Ltd, the firm part-owned by Paddy “the plasterer” Reilly, paid rent to its two directors of €154,391 in 2008, according to abridged accounts just filed.

The company, which runs a guest house of the same name on Gardiner Street, Dublin, is owned equally by Mr Reilly and businessman Brian Moloney.

The accounts show the firm had no bank overdraft at the end of the year, compared to an overdraft of €74,401 at the end of 2007.

No profit figure is given.

Can’t say much more. Still diggin’.

Does the backbencher O'Donoghue owe us tax?

While some are hoping An Taoiseach may ask John O’Donoghue to repay some of his gross overspending, we are a little more realistic. We know they’re both cut from the same cloth, and thus Cowen will never ask Johnny to cough up.

However, the Revenue Commissioners, an independent body, tell us that benefit-in-kind tax can apply to a holder of public office whose spouses’ expenses were paid for by the taxpayer. It therefore may apply to travel undertaken by Kate-Ann O’Donoghue when she was not partaking in “official business”. If Kate-Ann traveled but was not attending meetings or conferences as the wife of the minister, then the tax would apply.

Revenue don’t comment on individual cases but we wonder how much of the expenses incurred constituted official business. Are the trips as a whole official business or do Revenue take each expense on its merit?

Do water taxis count? VIP facilities in Paris?

Note: Unfortunately the Public Accounts Committee would probably be required to direct Revenue to investigate this, as they did with Rody Molloy.  Unlike Rody, Junket John is politician, so are the members of the PAC… there’s more chance of them doing it than Cowen making the order, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

… get up them stairs, Johnny

[Thanks to IrishElection for the clip of Junket Johnny O’Donoghue speaking today before his resignation. I’m going to assume he didn’t need a limo to get from the chair to the backbenches.]

His speech reeked of a sense of entitlement that appears to have polluted parliament to a massive degree. The anecdotal evidence that Fine Gaelers are amongst the deputies giving Labour TDs the cold shoulder following Eamon Gilmore’s intervention last week speaks volumes. I suspect this abuse of the expenses system is not solely a Fianna Fáil problem, they just happen to have been in Government the last eleven years. Continue reading “… get up them stairs, Johnny”

A visualisation of donations to parties by industry

One of our regular readers, Steve White, has taken the data we collated on political donations and used a visualisation tool to display it.

The box below proportions donations to political parties (not including donations directly to politicians) by donor industry. To change the way the information is shown you can move the “Description of Donor” arrow at the top back behind the “Party” arrow. Doing that will show you to which party donations from a certain sector went to… unsurprisingly Fianna Fáil make up about 90% of the Property and Construction box.

It should be noted that this was built using incomplete data. We have only accredited an industry to about 70% of donors in our political donations spreadsheets, additionally, to give a complete visualisation you would need to add in the details of donations to individual politicians. We’ll be doing this over the next few months, sit tight.

When that is done I’d guess that the percentage of donations from property and construction would be about 55% FF and 30% FG, with the other parties, bar the Greens, covering the rest. This one is skewed slightly because big developers have tended to donate directly to the party, but it is still interesting.

You can read details of all donations to political parties in our spreadsheets section.

Big credit to Steve White.

25% isn't a bad standard, is it SIPO?

I had a good one due to go up today, a really good one, honest. Unfortunately the judicial process took a chunk out of it, then while I was parsing data I discovered there was way more to it than I’d realised. So, I’m going to continue digging and publish that at some point in the future, when on more concrete legal ground.

In the meantime, I was due to pitch this yarn to the papers but I’ve been working 16 hour days and haven’t got ’round to it. If you’re a journo reading this, feel free to rewrite it – but I want a co-byline, which I will invoice for, muthafuckers (or at least a credit for this website, pretty please.)

Way back in July the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) published their annual report for 2008. Until about two weeks ago I was in prolonged correspondence with their press spokesperson about it.

For those unaccustomed with them, SIPO are tasked with ensuring our political parties and that crew in the Leinster House comply with the accounting rules, expenses regulations, donations limits an’ all dah’. Many of their reports, while rarely covered in the press, are worth reading. Unfortunately, they’re working with awful legislation, but doing an pretty poor job on top of that, at least in some areas, as I found out.

So, I was looking through the report the day it was published when, under the subhead “Accounting Units of political parties“, I came across this paragraph:

During 2008, the Standards Commission wrote to 202 accounting units which were identified by the relevant political parties (158 accounting units had been contacted in 2007). 62 accounting units furnished the required statutory documentation by the statutory deadline of 31 March 2008. 78 accounting units failed to furnish their statutory documentation on time. 12 branches of political parties informed the Standards Commission that they have never been an accounting unit or are no longer active. 15 accounting units did not reply.

FYI – An accounting unit is a branch of a political party.

That paragraph made my eyebrow twitch and I know when my eyebrow starts twitching, I’m onto something (that was a lie). 78 is a serious number to fail to furnish required documentation on time, but it was too big to look into on my own. 12 units informing SIPO they’re not active was of little interest, but I followed this up, and the number proved correct.

But 15 units not replying, eh? That sounds juicy. Which party branches would they be? What did SIPO do when they didn’t reply? How were they punished? I put these questions to the Commission spokesperson.

“What measures did SIPO take when the accounting units did not reply?” I asked first…

Continue reading “25% isn't a bad standard, is it SIPO?”

Fás Internal Audit (INV 137) now online

TheStory has obtained a copy of the internal audit which triggered the recent C&AG report into Fás and we’re digging through the details. We believe we have uncovered a mass of new information, the details of which we will publish early next week.

For now, we’re simply going to put the document into the public domain. It is heavily redacted.

However, The Irish Times has seen an unredacted version and reported some of its contents. The Sunday Times has also covered the story in some depth, including this piece, probably the most comprehensive one on the subject.

The document also contains two names which, it appears, were accidentally unredacted. As we are most unlike other media, who have teams of lawyers to check each item published for legal issues, we have added redactions ourselves in those two areas. This is simply us being highly cautious. But we assure you, the unredecated names will be published once we get advice on the matter. Note: Our redactions are on page 7 and page 31.

The audit was the result by an anonymous letter sent to Mary Harney in 2005, when she was Enterprise Minister. The letter made seven allegations specifically against Greg Craig, who was the director of corporate affairs in Fás at the time. It is important to note that the audit team found “no evidence” to support six of the seven allegations and that the one other was only partially true. Mr Craig is now director of health and safety in Fás following a period of paid suspension.

While our digging has uncovered, we believe, some odd connections between some companies named in the report and various other people of interest, we’re at a loss in some areas.

We’d appreciate help uncovering information about a number of companies and one individual. In particular we’d like to answer the “how did…” type questions raised about them in the audit.

The companies are:

Ultimate Communications, directed by Niall Gallen and Audrey Browne. We’d like to know if this company had any connection with Greg Craig (who appears to have known many of the contractors personally or have dealt with them professionally for a long period) or political parties. The company has an address in Kiltallaght House, Grangebellew, Co. Louth. They were contracted to build the Fás website 10 days after they incorporated and received €3.55m worth of work from Fás in their first year operating.

Helm O’Connor O’Sullivan, directed by Donald Helme and Dale Parry with an address in Serpentine Avenue, Ballsbridge. An advertising agency.

Posterplan Ltd (now called Kinetic Advertising), directed by Brian Townshend, Carol Ann Hogan and Simon Rupert Durham with an address at 31 Ballsbridge Terrace. Shareholders include POA Holdings Limited. Posterplan are a well-known company who sell advertising space on billboards, bus shelters and the likes…

Display Contracts Ltd, directed by James O’Brien and James O’Brien Junior with an address in Beau Lane House, Mercer Street, Dublin 2. Shareholders include Adrienne O’Brien, James O’Brien, James E O’Brien, Margaret O’Brien, Nofleen O’Brien, Paula O’Brien and Tony O’Brien.

“Design House“, the only information we could uncover about this company is in the report, it says it is directed by a Robert Saunders.

We’d also like to know the name of a “daughter of a well-known property developer and friend of Greg Craig“. That’s how she is described in the report. We have an idea as to their names but would like confirmation, or an additional lead.

Of course all of these companies and individuals were surely operating entirely lawfully in all of their dealings, including those with Fás, but we’d like to know a little more about them, how their structured, and their contact, if any, with Fás and in particularly, Greg Craig.


Tips can be sent to tips [at] thestory.ie or we can be contacted individually via coughlanmp [at] gmail.com or gavinsblog [at] gmail.com

More early next week…

JO'D expenses and allowances documents

Update: Word reaches TheStory that these documents were dumped solely because they were released to The Sunday Tribune earlier today via FOI at the cost of €600.

The Tribune were charged for the documents (€600 is a massive fee for an FOI) then they were put in the Dáil library almost immediately.

This is the most incredible behaviour from John O’Donoghue in attempting to get one over The Sunday Tribune who have consistently been a thorn in the side of expense-account-abusing public representatives for the last number of months.

John O’Donoghue clearly realises he can only hide for so long.

Update 2:

I have tabulated the foreign travel into a spreadsheet.

Total cost for foreign travel, 2007 – 2009: €89,277.74
Total cost for official entertainment: €5,010.15
Total cost for domestic travel: €13,305.57

All credit to the Sunday Tribune and Ken Foxe for getting this information out. Albeit earlier than they had intended – Gavin

Update 3:

All receipts (PDFs):

Explanatory document on CC expenses

Schedule 1 – Allowances and Expenses
Schedule 2 Domestic flights
Schedule 3 Details of foreign travel
Schedule 4 – Official entertainment

DOC

Domestic Travel 1
Domestic Travel 2
Domestic Travel 3
Domestic Travel 4
Domestic Travel 5

1 Stop Shop Constituency Expenses
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John O’Donoghue’s cost claims while Ceann Comhairle were unexpectedly put into the Dáil library today – yes, a Friday, the Friday before Lisbon results, no less.

I’m told they are absolutely massive, far too big to send in an email, but the House of the Oireachtas press office has kindly supplied me with partial summaries. They’re all linked below…

I haven’t had time to check them out, I’m working on another project – all I spotted was the number of flights between Dublin and Kerry. It looks like he flew from one to the other once a week on average between June 07 and December 08. Where was his ministerial car? I hope it wasn’t following him down on the road, as I’ve heard some ministers have ordered in the past.

Anyway, enjoy…

Overview of all payments to current Ceann Comhairle from the House of Oireachtas

Details of expenses and allowances claimed by Ceann Comhairle from Houses of Oireachtas

Details of domestic flights taken by CC

Details of foreign travel undertaken by CC

Library version of official entertainment bill

Remember, down the bottom of each spreadsheet may be a number of other tabs, what you see initially may only be part of the story.

You can gain access to the Dáil library and examine the documents in full yourself. I plan on doing so on my next day off, sometime next week.