Category: FOIs

Department of Foreign Affairs Expenses data 2009

As previously mentioned I am converting expenses data sent to me in PDF form back into spreadsheets. 2009 is the first. You might notice some missing data in the last few rows of the 13,388 claims – I will remedy this later this evening – sometimes the conversion process is a bit wonky. The database contains €1.65m of expense claims for 2009.

You can look at the data on Socrata or download it from there

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This is the same figures broken down by payee, in order of size of total expense claim:

And the same under the mileage heading:

And a bar chart showing mileage claimants:

And a pie chart showing in what categories expenses are claimed:

And the spreadsheet for categories:

Minister for Finance diary 2007

As part of an ongoing process. The appointments diary of the Minister for Finance for 2007.



Previously:

Finance diary May 2008 to March 2009
William Beusang diary May 2008 to May 2009
Ann Nolan diary May 2008 to May 2009
Derek Moran
Kevin Cardiff diary May 2008 to May 2009

Taoiseach’s diary 2001

As part of an ongoing process. The appointments diary of then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for the year 2001. Redactions marked ‘A’ are so because the department believes them to be “personal information” as defined in Section 28 of the FOI act. Entries marked ‘B’ relate to the Taoiseach’s private papers as a member of the Oireachtas. Regards ‘B’ redactions – the cover letter from the FOI officer states “Section 46 of the Act states, inter alia, that the Act does not apply to records relating to any of the private papers of a member of the Oireachtas and as such I consider that the Act does not apply to these entries.”



Previously:
Taoiseach diary April 1998 to March 1999
Taoiseach diary April to December 1999
Taoiseach diary 2000
Taoiseach diary 2005
Taoiseach diary 2006
Taoiseach diary May 2008 to May 2009

Taoiseach’s diary 2000

As part of an ongoing process. The appointments diary of then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for the year 2000.



Previously:
Taoiseach diary April 1998 to March 1999
Taoiseach diary April to December 1999
Taoiseach diary 2005
Taoiseach diary 2006
Taoiseach diary May 2008 to May 2009

Callely phone claims – original documents

Luke Byrne of the Mail on Sunday, who penned the original story related to the mobile phone expense claims of Senator Ivor Callely on Sunday, has been kind enough to pass on the original documents received from his FOI request. I have run an OCR process on the documents, and combined them into one PDF.

A declaration on the claims form states:

I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THE EXPENSES CLAIMED HAVE BEEN ACTUALLY AND NECESSARILY INCURRED BY ME IN RELATION TO MY MEMBERSHIP OF DAIL EIREANN AND THE PARTICULARS FURNISHED HEREIN ARE IN ALL RESPECTS TRUE.

This is signed and dated by Mr Callely on each claim form.

The company on the headed paper, which gives its company number at the bottom of the document (150878), put out a notice in February 1994 that a liquidator was being appointed. You can read the company’s submissions on the CRO website. The company was subsequently dissolved. The claim forms were stamped by the Oireachtas on November 21 and 22, 2007. Another document is the certificate showing that the company was wound up by the Examiner’s Office.

Here are the documents:


Anglo’s meetings with Finance

Readers might recall that back in November, I published an FOI released to Deputy Joan Burton. She appealed a decision by the Department of Finance to refuse the release of certain documents to the Information Commissioner, and the Commissioner appears to have settled the matter with the Department – resulting in the release of more documents. Joan was kind enough to pass a copy onto me. The Irish Independent reported on the documents last week.

The documents contain the minutes of a meeting between the Department of Finance and Anglo representatives in December 2008. Sean FitzPatrick and Kevin Cardiff were present. At the meeting, Anglo proposed that Standard Life and the Irish Government would help underwrite a rights issue, the draft plan is included in the documents. It also contains a letter from Anglo chairman Donal O’Connor, dated January 15, 2009, where he states:

First, we have considered the funding and the assets and liabilities of the Bank and we confirmthat in the contextof the Government’s commitment the Bank remains solvent. Secondly, while we cannot predict the response of our depositors and other creditors to nationalisation with accuracy, we confirm our belief that, given all necessary support, the Bank can remain a viable institution in the context of nationalisation.

And as late as January 8, days before nationalisation, staff at the Department appeared to be still asking how many branches Anglo had.

Tony,
Further to our conversation this morning, we have offices in six foreign jurisdictions:
1. The UK operations are a branch in accordance with Article 25 of Directive 2006/48/EC. This is usually referred to as “an EU branch”. Partially regulated by the FSA.
2. Germany – as UK. Partially regulated by the BaFin.
3. Austria – as UK. Partially regulated by the FMA.
4. United States – three representative offices in Massachusetts, New York and Illinoislicensed by the Federal Reserve Bank and each State Regulator.
5. Isle of Han – a subsidiary licensed by the Isle of Man Financial Supervision Commission.
6. Jersey – a branch licensed by the Jersey Financial Services Commission.

I also confirm our conversation that we will launch the Mortgage Bank without the Govt Guarantee in place, and once the CEBS rules become clearer on the disclosure for Guarantors we will look to have the Mortgage Bank included.

And it includes this gem from Sean FitzPatrick, on how long it would take Standard Life to do due diligence:

SF Indicated that due diligence would take circa 48 hours. He acknowledged that they need to prove that they can get a substantial part of the funds required and that they need to bridge a credibility gap between Finance/FR and Anglo’s thinking.



Oireachtas staff expenses data 2004 to 2010

While an appeal is currently pending with the Information Commissioner in relation a request seeking an export of the entire financial management system in use at the Houses of the Oireachtas, the Oireachtas were kind enough to release a portion of the information sought. These databases contain the expense claims of staff at the House of the Oireachtas under three headings, Committee Travel, Interparliamentary Travel and Other staff Travel for 2004 to 2010, in about 15,000 rows.

These spreadsheets are published “as is”, with one exception. I have temporarily removed the column for date of the claim, because Google Spreadsheets seems to be having issues converting some of the cell dates, and is giving incorrect dates. I will fix this, and publish later.

Below you will see the decision letter which explains some of the column headings – please read this before you look at the spreadsheets as it contains important provisos and explanations.

Decision letter

Oireachtas Interparliamentary Travel staff expenses
Oireachtas Committee Travel staff expenses
Oireachtas Other staff travel expenses

The spreadsheets themselves are in need of cleaning (subtotals are included in the Amount column for example).

Sunday Times piece on Fás

We’ve a story in today’s Sunday Times about an interesting building that Fás has been renting from a Mr Terry Oliver. It’s behind a paywall, so no link, unfortunately. It took several months to compile through a series of FOI requests which were funded from you lot, the people who do be readin’ this here blog.

The Sunday Times piece opens…

FAS, the state training agency, is renting a warehouse from the former tax partner of a consultancy firm which has been “consistently successful” in tendering for work from the agency.

Unit 9 at Tolka Valley business park in Finglas, north Dublin, has been rented since 2000 from Terry Oliver, formerly of OSK, an accounting and business consultancy.  Internal audits have concluded  that Greg Craig, the former head of corporate affairs at Fás, had a conflict of interest in awarding contracts to OSK because of his close personal relationship with Oliver.

I will post it in full on Monday.

For those of you who bought a copy of the paper and therefore have the context, here’s the documents…



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1) November 2000 – Solicitors refer to finance and admin manager asking that the lease be concluded “as expeditiously as possible”, before the lease was signed off.

2) Fire safety compliance questioned if building altered. Work was later done on the building.

3) Mr Oliver disputes cancellation of lease in reply to letter from training centre.

4) March 2003 – Manager of training centre writes to Mr Oliver to confirm they will seek to cancel the lease.

5) Email from Richard Keegan who assessed the site and found it was not fire safety compliant; did not have a fundamental requirement for running applicable courses; had been closed in the past as it didn’t meet basic health and safety regulations; does not have ventilation for gas welding… “not to mention all the other regulations it has been in breach of in the past”.

6) June 2007 – Concerns raised about the effectiveness of running a plumbing course in a building with no gas facilities.

7) Manager of training centre says that sub-letting or amending the site would not be cost-effective, notes site would require significant work to make it suitable for a prospective tenant.

8) October 2009 – Letter from local manager tells of how they had attempted to get out of the lease recently once more, notes the lease was “watertight”.

9) Example cheque for monthly rent.

10) Example invoice.

Copy of inquiry sent to Fás Press office last Tuesday. Please note that most of the questions listed could be answered from the 300+ pages of documents we obtained under FOI for this story, we were looking to get useful quotes.

—

This type of work is utterly uneconomical for two freelance journalists to undertake. Even without including costs for our time spent working on the story, we’d still make a loss simply on expenses incurred. All money received from the Sunday Times goes back into the FOI fund.

I’ll post some additional information later in the week.

Knackered, until next time.

Dick Roche claimed €50k in mileage in two years

The Minister of State with special responsibility for European Affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Dick Roche, claimed over €50,000 in “mileage costs” from his Department over two years – the highest total mileage claim of anyone at the Department over that period.

According to a database released under the Freedom of Information Act, Mr Roche ranks first for mileage claims for the entire department for both 2008 and 2009. In 2008 he claimed €28,466.97 in mileage costs, while in 2009 Mr Roche claimed €21,563.56 under the same heading – a total of €50,030.53.

In 2009 a total of €157,466.02 was claimed by Department of Foreign Affairs staff under the mileage cost heading, with Mr Roche’s claims accounting for over 13% of the cost of all mileage claims in that year. In 2008 Mr Roche claimed 11% of the €268,403.34 of all mileage costs at the Department. Mr Roche was appointed Minister of State at the Department after the 2002 general election and was reappointed in 2007.

Mr Roche’s senior at the Department, Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin did not make any claims for mileage costs. His total claims for 2009 were €2,662.63, mostly for “subsistence costs”. Mr Martin has the use of a Ministerial car. The next highest claimant of mileage expenses after Mr Roche in 2008 was Patrick J Kelly, who claimed €10,025.40.

Under all expense headings, other staff at the Department include Ambassador to Turkey Thomas Russell, who claimed €16,784.28 in 2009. Ambassador to Australia Mairtin O’Fainin claimed €16,584.45 in 2009, Ambassador to Egypt Richard O’Brien claimed €15,559.16, Francis Rickard claimed €15,406.94 and Second Secretary at the Irish embassy in Abu Dhabi Robert O’Driscoll claimed €14,478.93 in 2009.

The Department press office said as far as it was aware Mr Roche does not employ the services of a driver and does not have a ministerial car at his disposal. Mr Roche is based in Bray, Co Wicklow, 20km from Dublin city centre. However Mr Roche was heavily involved in campaigning for the Lisbon Treaty in both 2008 and 2009. In 2007 his mileage claims totalled under €13,000. Mr Roche’s involvement in the campaign could have had a significant effect on his claims. According to SIPO “The use of Ministerial cars, including drivers, by Ministers (not Ministers of State) during the election period, is not an election expense as the cars and drivers are provided as a security measure and Ministers are required to use them at all times.”

As a TD, Mr Roche was paid a salary of €98,164.32 in 2008, and did not claim any travel or subsistence expenses from the Oireachtas. Mr Roche’s expenses claims at the Department of Foreign Affairs have continued into 2010, with the most recent single claim for €1,050.59 made for mileage costs on February 19, 2010. A Junior Minister could expect to earn €147,284 a year in 2007, on top of their average TD salary of €122,000.

Expenses data for all staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 will be published here in the coming weeks.

Updated:

In 2007 it emerged that many junior ministers were claiming large amounts of mileage:

THE current system of paying junior ministers’ mileage has been described as a “farce” after it emerged a TD in Dublin claimed 100 times more in petrol expenses than a TD in Galway.

Figures seen by the Irish Independent show that Noel Ahern, who represents Dublin North West, ran up mileage expenses of €19,710 last year and €20,390 to date this year.

This is 100 times more than the €190 which was claimed last year by Noel Treacy, who represents the people of Galway East.

But last night, Mr Ahern claimed the figures supplied by the department about Mr Treacy were “ridiculous” and “wrong”. He said he is usually at the lower end of claims when a full list is compiled adding: “I don’t think that (€19,710) is necessarily that much.”

Figures show the Department of the Environment — which is headed up by the Green’s John Gormley — has covered the most road miles.

The biggest claim last year was lodged by Cork’s Minister of State for Environment, Batt O’Keeffe — who ran up a travel bill of €62,638 and has already run up expenses of €32,240 so far this year.

Junior ministers were allowed to claim expenses following a Government decision in 1983 barred ministers of State from using a state car. Junior ministers do receive a civilian driver — but in a bid to cut costs, the Government allowed them to claim travel costs on up to 60,000 miles.

As long as ministers can prove that they used their car for official State business they are covered — and can claim travel allowance like any public servant on official business.