Tourism Ireland was worried a Lonely Planet article about the cost of visiting Ireland would get “amplified” across the world amid a “low but consistent number of complaints” about rising bills for holidays makers visiting here.
Monitoring had found there was a steady level of complaints online from visitors to Ireland on social media with 55 of 68 issues raised in a single week relating to costs, and 42% of all complaints specifically about car hire.
The state agency said there was continuing “low-level feedback” on the cost of renting a car as well as hotel room costs from trade partners and on social media.
However, Tourism Ireland said they had so far largely escaped negative coverage in mainstream media in a briefing paper.
The country-by-country special report on rising costs said trade partners in France were particularly concerned about “ongoing price and availability issues”.
Irish Rail poured cold water on suggestions they could run train services through the night or at much later or earlier hours.
There have been growing calls for the rail operator to put on additional early or late trains to match service levels that are available in many EU countries.
However, in discussions with the National Transport Authority (NTA), Irish Rail said 24/7 operations would not be “viable irrespective of any level of funding” that was available.
A senior Irish Rail official said overnight gaps in service were a key time for maintenance works and if those hours were lost, “the infrastructure … could not be maintained to a safe standard”.
An email said: “The Irish Rail network does not allow for alternative routing of services unlike, for instance, certain parts of the Great Britain network where diversionary routes allow for longer operational days.”
Some staff in Leinster House were working so much overtime that they almost doubled their salaries, according to an internal audit.
The inquiry found that two employees in the Superintendent’s office had received overtime payments worth 81% and 86% of their basic salaries.
The overtime payments almost doubled their basic salaries: in the case of the first employee from €36,801 to €69,248, including €29,641 in overtime and €2,805 in allowances, and for the second employee from €30,747 to €63,244, including €26,374 in overtime as well as allowances of €6,122.
The audit also found that the first employee had been working on average 61 hours a week during the period they examined, which was in breach of working time legislation.
It said over a six-week period, a total of 2,108 hours of overtime had been worked in the Superintendent’s office – which was the equivalent of approximately eight extra full-time staff per week.
The internal audit said: “Sixty-eight employees working overtime were in receipt of payments that equated to more than 20% of their basic salary.
“Of these sixty-eight, seven were in receipt of overtime equating to more than 50% of their basic salary.”
The Department of Foreign Affairs paid out more than €21,000 for a four-star hotel for the Irish Ambassador in Cairo after his official residence was deemed “unsafe and uninhabitable”.
The Ambassador had to stay in the luxury Hilton Cairo Zamalek Residences overlooking the Nile for almost four months last year because of “structural” issues discovered at his diplomatic residence.
Two separate accommodation bills were paid by the department, one for €11,438 and another for just over €10,000, according to invoices.
An internal audit at RTÉ found senior managers were being asked to sign off on purchase card statements they knew little about and had to check more statements than they could feasibly manage.
The audit said individual managers were often too far removed from the “day to day requirements” of a programme to understand if purchases being made were legitimate or not.
It said this left RTÉ exposed to “inappropriate transactions” where managers had little oversight over an individual programme, and what might actually be needed to make it.
The audit gave an example of a lawnmower being purchased on a purchase card for the production needs of a specific programme or scene.
It said: “Checking of the receipt alone does not satisfy whether the purchase was actually required for RTÉ.”
The investigation also raised significant concerns over the level of checking of purchase card statements with 67% of a sample “not appropriately approved”.
This involved an absence of approval evidence on seven envelopes of statements they examined, and three examples where the cardholder had self-authorised their own expenditure.
Individual students are being targeted by online services offering to write assessments for them while “promoters” are suspected to have been hired within colleges to gather inside information on assignments.
Students have even been contacted individually on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram about specific essays they had to do as part of their college work.
A memo from Quality and Qualifications Ireland (QQI) said it was suspected details of the assignments were either being provided by other students in exchange for discounts, or where students had been hired as “promoters” on college campuses.
The background memo said certain types of students were particularly at risk of using so-called ‘essay mills’ for cheating on assignments including postgraduate students and international students.
The briefing note explained: “Certain cohorts of learners appear to be more vulnerable to use of assignment writing services. In particular: international students where the pressure to succeed is very high and high levels of shame are associated with failing.
“[Also] postgraduate students where again there is a high level of investment in succeeding and learners may have additional financial and other pressures to deal with; and students on business and computer science (and related subject area) programmes.”
Senior officials warned that reliability issues afflicting the government’s ailing jet had become “intolerable” with the risk of Taoiseach Micheal Martin getting “stuck” overseas for an extended period.
The €8 million Learjet has been repeatedly out of service over the past year and a half with the Department of Defence earlier this year told to hire a charter plane for a trip to Paris and London by the Taoiseach and a delegation.
In internal emails, the Department of the Taoiseach said the hiring of that executive jet – understood to have cost a five-figure sum – had been done because there was no other choice.
An email from Assistant Secretary to the Government Dermot Woods to senior colleagues said: “I must emphasise the strong reluctance with which this course of action is taken, particularly given the additional costs that are entailed, but the recent experiences have made the MATS [Ministerial Air Transport] situation intolerable.
“The Taoiseach’s essential travel to and from Berlin and Brussels recently put this matter into very stark relief again and it is my strong view that things can’t be allowed to continue as they are.”
A county council allowed a private hospital to use three advertising billboards on state-owned land for free for nearly twenty years.
Even after the council’s traffic section told colleagues four years ago that the billboards were a “safety distraction” because of their location at a very busy road junction – they were not removed until the end of last month.
It has also emerged that officials at Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council had planned to meet with the Beacon Hospital about removal of the billboards last year.
However, they decided to postpone it because of the Covid-19 vaccination controversy involving the hospital on the basis “they had more on their minds than billboards”.
The saga began around 2003 or 2004 when the three billboards were first erected on council-owned land at Drummartin Link Road in Dublin’s Sandyford.
In later correspondence, the Beacon said it was their understanding they were available for use once they were “maintained … in good condition”.
However, in November 2017, they looked to regularise the situation writing to the council seeking permission to retain them there.
A letter from them said: “It has been brought to our attention recently that this land is council property and we’ve been asked to remove same or risk receiving litter fines.”
The letter added: “We have obviously maintained them since and they are extremely valuable promotional boards for the businesses.”
Internal discussions in Dun Laoghaire Rathdown council weighed up the pros and cons of granting permission with two sections of the council suggesting a licence fee could be sought for the site.
However, by June 2018, the council had decided the billboards needed to be removed.
In a letter to the Beacon Hospital, the local authority explained how their traffic section had said the advertising panels were “a safety distraction to drivers and other road users on a very busy access route off the M50 motorway”.
It added: “The size; number and location of the signage will also cause problems in the development of future road and cycle tracks infrastructure in the area.”
A year later in 2019 however, nothing had changed, and the signs remained in situ.
A local councillor who had raised questions about them was told there had been “ongoing discussion” about what the next steps should be.
The council said: “It has now been decided and agreed that the Council will write to the owners of the structures requiring their removal within a set timeframe.”
By February 2020, officials were still talking about meeting with the Beacon, but the billboards remained in place a year later.
In February of last year, the council received a complaint about the billboards, including the installation of new lighting at the site, which was now shining into neighbouring buildings.
An internal email about the complaint asked that it not be logged on the council’s internal Customer Relationship Manager system saying it was “one of those things that will take time to sort out”.
Later in April in internal discussions, a council official said there had been plans to meet with the Beacon to “sort this thing out once and for all”.
An email added: “However this did not go ahead as the story broke in the media about the vaccinations etc. so I guessed that they had more on their minds than Billboards then!!”
Another complaint was lodged with the council in autumn last year where details of planning permission for the billboards were sought.
A response to that said it was not a planning matter and that it had been referred on to the council’s property management team.
In November 2021, an official responded to say: “They [the billboards] are an issue I have been dealing with on and off for some time, but unfortunately, we have not been able to devote enough time to it yet to achieve a resolution. However, it will continue to be a project for us until it is sorted out.”
It was only after Right to Know submitted queries to the council that the billboards were finally removed from the junction.
A spokesperson for the council said: “The billboards are not commercial, and no income was received for them. The billboards are in the process of being removed.”
A PR company for the Beacon Hospital said they had no comment to make.
HSE chief Paul Reid accused the Department of Health of “unwarranted slurs” on his staff in a row over leaked recordings of department meetings.
Mr Reid said it was “beyond belief” that a 45-minute meeting had discussed the HSE in such a “disparaging and damaging manner”.
In a message to Department of Health Secretary General Robert Watt, the outgoing CEO of the Health Service Executive fumed over the lack of “any basic standards of respect” for colleagues which were revealed by the tapes.
The furious email followed newspaper reports based on secret recordings of meetings of department staff which were highly critical of the HSE.
They contained references to “fake targets”, concerns about the health service’s “financial sloppiness”, and the credibility of health budgets.
On the day the meetings were first reported, Paul Reid directly emailed Robert Watt to say that what had emerged was “extremely disappointing and frustrating”.
Mr Reid said they had jointly agreed an approach on recruitment and the treatment of the HSE financial accounts for last year.
He wrote: “The fact that a 45-minute meeting appears to have been dominated by such commentary is beyond belief.”
Later, he said: “Any basic standards of respect for colleagues or decent management behaviours appear to be lacking, by quoted attendees at the referenced meeting.
“This is at complete odds with the good collaboration that goes on between our teams, not least of all over the past two years in response to Covid.”
Mr Reid said he appreciated that telephone calls had been made the day before by department staff to apologise about what was about to be reported.
He also said that the chairman of the HSE had been in touch to express the “frustrations” of the board of what had been made public.
Mr Reid added: “I do take my duty of care for staff seriously. Therefore, I would appreciate your views as to how it can be arranged for a full and complete retraction of these remarks and inferences made. Left as they are, they leave utterly unwarranted slurs on reputations.”
RTÉ has been issued with 29 separate sets of legal proceedings for defamation over the past six years with a sharp uptick in cases so far this year.
The cases have cost the broadcaster more than €4.7 million – or an average of around €160,000 each – although not all the cases have yet been closed and costs are likely to rise still further.
RTÉ said it would not be possible to say how often they were threatened with a defamation claim but could provide data on when legal proceedings were actually issued.
They said in 2017, there had been eight cases, four the following year, and another five cases in 2019, according to records released under FOI.
In 2020, there were seven cases, and just one in 2021. However, the number of defamation proceedings has bounced back with four already in the first five months of this year.