Tag: FOI

Dunne & Maxwell Limited and yourmoney.ie

I see the Central Bank has sent letters out to customers who are involved with the website yourmoney.ie. The company behind yourmoney.ie is called Dunne & Maxwell Limited, a company previously called Zaynabi Limited.

One of the main shareholders in Dunne & Maxwell according to the 2009 B1 Certificate is Adam Deering, with a registered address in Cheshire, UK. Other shareholders are people from Cork – Derek Murphy and Jerry Curtis. Jerry Curtis resigned as a director of the company in late 2009.

This is the company’s only B1 certificate. No accounts are available. The company also is listed for strike-off.

Of course publishing this information does not imply wrongdoing on the part of the above-named individuals, I am simply publishing documents relating to the company in question.


ECB refuses access to Trichet/Lenihan bailout letter

The European Central Bank has refused to release a letter sent to former Finance Minister Brian Lenihan in November 2010, stating that the release of the letter’s contents would “undermine the protection of the public interest as regards the monetary policy of the Union and as regards the stability of the financial system in a Member State”. I submitted a request to the ECB for all letters sent to Brian Lenihan or his office in November 2010.

In April last year the contents of an interview between Dan O’Brien of the Irish Times and the late Brian Lenihan were published, in which Lenihan said Ireland had been “bounced” into the EU/IMF bailout and that the first hard indication he had of the ECB wanting Ireland to accept a bailout came in a letter he received from the head of the bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, on November 12. In the letter, according to Mr Lenihan, Mr Trichet “raised the question about whether Ireland would be participating in a programme at that stage”.

In its decision not to release the letter, the ECB said:

The letter, dated 19 November 2010, is a strictly confidential communication between the ECB President and the Irish Minister of Finance and concerns measures addressing the extraordinarily severe and difficult situation of the Irish financial sector and their repercussions on the integrity of the euro area monetary policy and the stability of the Irish financial sector.

Furthermore the letter states:

The ECB must be in a position to convey pertinent and candid messages to European and national authorities in the manner judged to be the most effective to serve the public interest as regards the fulfilment of its mandate. If required and in the best interest of the public also effective informal and confidential communication must be possible and should not be undermined by the prospect of publicity.

In this case, the confidential communication was aimed at discussing measures conducive to protecting the effectiveness and integrity of the ECB’s monetary policy and fostering an environment that ultimately contribute to restoring confidence among investors in the overall solvency and sustainability of the Irish financial sector and markets, which, in turn, is of overriding importance for the smooth conduct of monetary policy.

We should like to draw your attention to the fact that in line with Article 10 of the ECB Decision on public access to ECB documents “documents released shall not be reproduced or exploited for commercial purposes without the ECB’s prior specific authorisation. The ECB may withhold such authorisation without stating reasons.”

I intend appealing this decision.

Here is the letter, along with the only other letter received by Brian Lenihan in November 2010:


Anglo Irish/INBS restructuring plan 2011-2020

TheStory.ie has obtained a confidential plan submitted by Anglo Irish Bank/Irish Nationwide to the European Commission, which was put together by a working group from the Department of Finance, the NTMA, the Central Bank, Anglo and INBS.

The plan, dated January 31, 2011 was submitted to the European Commission for approval and was guided by the agreement reached between the Irish authorities, the EU, the IMF and ECB in November 2010. It outlines in detail the workout plan for the IBRC entity from now until 2020, under two headline scenarios – a base and stress scenario.

  • Under the the base scenario, IBRC says it could lose €3.5bn between 2011 and 2020, while under the stress scenario it could lose €8.1 billion. The bulk of these losses would be incurred in 2011/2012. It projects a loss of at least €400m between 2016 and 2020.
  • IBRC’s residential loan book will be prepared for eventual sale, probably in 2015. A 30% haircut is expected in the stress scenario leading to a loss to the taxpayer of €300 million.
  • Under a stress scenario outlined by the bank, IBRC will need an additional €3.2bn of equity capital which will be ‘drip fed’ across the plan period. The injections are required to keep an 8% total capital ratio. This drip feeding will be done in tranches of €1.7bn, €1.3bn, €0.01bn, €0.04bn and €0.2bn.
  • IBRC will be reliant on the Central Bank/ELA funding for the duration of the plan, right up to 2020. IBRC will need €36.7bn funding from the CBI/ELA by 2015 and €15.9bn by 2019 under the base case.
  • IBRC had to fund €18bn of non-Euro exposure (out of €49bn total from CBI/ELA), which was 60% sterling and 40% US dollar
  • The total cost to the taxpayer for IBRC under the stress case is estimated at €35.8bn (this includes INBS and Anglo remember).
  • Operating costs for IBRC were €405m in 2010 (Anglo and INBS before they were merged), with projections for operating costs of between €217m and €250m in 2012. The largest savings are expected from staff reductions of 39% to 1,075. Wealth management will be sold or wound down over a period of five years.

    I intend releasing the full 66 page plan on TheStory.ie.

    • Enda Kenny overruled two Ministers to give €35,000 pay rise

    Taoiseach Enda Kenny personally intervened to have a special adviser awarded a salary of €127,000, 37 per cent more than had been recommended.

    These are some of the Department of Enterprise communications, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, which outline the chain of events leading to the decision.

    After the general election, Ciaran Conlon was appointed as an adviser to Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton. Under new guidelines set out by the Department of Finance, a salary cap had been put in place for such positions, ranging from around €80,000 to €92,000 per year. It appears from the emails however, that Mr Conlon had already been promised an annual wage of €127,000.

    A difficulty arose when both Minister for Public Expenditure Reform Brendan Howlin and Finance Minister Michael Noonan refused to grant this higher salary. A memo in the Department of Enterprise explained that they were willing to pay him at the higher end of the scale, approving a pay level of €92,000.

    Ciaran Conlon, a former communications chief with Fine Gael, was not happy with this, writing in an email: ‘This is getting ridiculous. The minister sent over a memo on this issue weeks ago. This has been passed at the very highest level in Government Buildings.’

    Enda Kenny then intervened with his private secretary writing to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and expressing the Taoiseach’s wish for a salary of €127,000. The Department caved in and a new contract for Mr Conlon was drawn up.

    The story I wrote in this week’s Mail on Sunday outlines what happened in more detail:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069731/How-Irish-PM-ordered-officials-break-salary-cap-old-friend-PR-adviser.html

    Here are the documents:


    Anglo vs the Commissioner for Environmental Information

    I received notice party documents yesterday from McCann Fitzgerald solicitors in to the impending case between Anglo Irish Bank and the Commissioner for Environmental Information. NAMA are also taking a similar case. Both are in relation to requests I submitted to both organisations in early 2010.

    To be clear here: my sole motivation is the public’s right to know more about Anglo Irish Bank and the National Asset Management Agency – two organisations that are costing the State a fortune, and are two of the most important bodies in the history of the State. The Environmental Regulations were the only avenue open to me from a right to information standpoint – so I have pursued the case, in partnership with Fred Logue, who holds similar views – and we intend seeing it through to the end.

    These are the court documents:


    David Drumm's response to Anglo

    As Simon Carswell outlines in this morning’s Irish Times, David Drumm has responded to Anglo in documents filed in court on Monday. It makes for very interesting reading.

    News geeks among you: here are the court documents which flew onto my computer faster than you can say bankrupt. The docuuments are in response to an earlier document submitted by Anglo, outlining their case. It is directly below this one – they need to be read in conjunction with each other.



    Department of Environment fixed assets registry

    In case you ever wondered, this is the fixed assets registry of the Department of the Environment. The total original cost of the assets was €71,974,935.65, which has been depreciated by €12,649,299.34 to €38,496,075.13.

    The registry details all the fixed assets, including tables, chairs, computers, bogs, vehicles (not sure why they are there) and how much was paid per item.

    Of note was the €29,766.00 and €14,915.79 spent on carpet for Minister Gormley’s corridor at Custom House Quay, though as an old building it probably would have required expensive carpet.

    Full sheet for download

    Anglo Irish Bank – a public authority under EIR

    Similar in nature to the earlier NAMA decision, the Commissioner for Environmental Information today ruled that Anglo Irish Bank (now known as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation) is a public authority for the purposes of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR). It relates to requests I submitted to the Bank in February 2010, which the bank had refused on the basis that it claimed it was not a public authority within the meaning of the Regulations.

    The decision means that the Bank is now open to requests under the Regulations, allowing citizens to submit requests for environmental information.

    IT DOES NOT MEAN ANGLO IS SUBJECT TO FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUESTS.

    Apologies for the caps but the two are often confused. Again a huge thanks to Fred Logue who provided huge assistance in drafting submissions in relation to this case.

    As the Regulations are little used, what defines environmental information has yet to be broadly defined but it could encompass a very broad range of information. For an easy way to get an idea of what environmental information could include, take a look at this UK guidance booklet and the UK version of the same legislation. Also take a look at Decision Notices in the UK in relation to EIR. Previous decisions by our Commissioner for Enviromental Information are available here, while the Irish guidance notes are here.

    Interestingly, the Bank also took the view that our reading of the legislation was “absurd”. This is the decision in full:


    Commission of inquiry on mental illness: 1966 report

    It doesn’t seem to have received much publicity, but the HSE has started publishing historical documents, particularly from Grangegorman Mental Hospital in the 1950s. Many PDFs are not OCRd so I’ve started the process. The documents are quite poorly scanned so the OCR won’t be as good as it could be. But it’s a start. All mental hospital records from this era should be digitised.

    Here is the Commission of inquiry on mental illness: 1966 report, which was already subject to OCR by the HSE. Thank you.