Tag: FOI

A step in the right direction – PoliticalReform.ie

I’m delighted to draw attention to the new blog from a number of Irish political scientists – politicalreform.ie. The contributors list is short for now but rumour is it may expand soon. I’d heard there were plans afoot for such a blog but only happened across it yesterday, turns out it has been operating below the radar for a few weeks.

Here’s hoping it can match IrishEconomy.ie, which has been influential in recent months, in its respective field. To do so will require thoughtful comment from readers to match thoughtful articles. The comments often maketh reform blogs. The debate between informed readers maketh IrishEconomy.

Go check out the site, subscribe to it and consider entering the debate.

To the writers – thanks, and that doesn’t come from me alone. I hope you stick with it.

Documents relating to The Tank Field, Cork, now online

Elaine Byrne has posted a number of links relating to a decision by Cork City Council to acquire one of the few open spaces remaining in North East Cork City. You can view the information on her blog under a series of posted tagged “The Tank Field”.

Local journalists in Cork, lookin’ at you ‘ere…

The series is written in reply to a letter from the Board of Management of the school sent to the Irish Times following an opinion piece written by Dr Byrne on the matter. Links to correspondence and FOI documents are contained through-out.

There are ten points listed in the letter and Ms Byrne replies to each under a separete heading…

Continue reading “Documents relating to The Tank Field, Cork, now online”

Breen, O'Keeffe and Lowry claim €205.78 per day?

I’ve been doing the maths on the expenses documents Gav published last week. An interesting exercise…

As reported by the Tribune, the three biggest expense claimants over the last four years were Ned O’Keeffe of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael’s Pat Breen and the independent TD Michael Lowry, so I’ve been looking at them to begin.

Before I go any further I wish to say I’ll be getting the median claimant and doing something similar to this at a later date too, before any one tells me I’m a populist gobshite for picking the top three (I knew that already).

Messrs Breen, O’Keeffe and Lowry all claimed within €10,000 of €300,000 for the period covering 2005 to 2008, mainly for the same things, so for the purpose of this post I’ll won’t be differentiating between them. Additionally, Gavin has since received documents for 2003 and 2004 – which he’ll post when he gets a chance – so I’ll be including their details from those years here too. Therefore the following numbers could from FOI documents for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 for Pat Breen, Ned O’Keeffe and Michael Lowry. Feel free to challenge my methodology, or attempt to use your own, but I’m fairly confident in my maths (while welcoming confirmation/correction from those more qualified in the field)…

All of this is on top of the their salaries of around €100,000 per annum.

Over six years they claimed €1,319,070.49 (€1.3m) between the three of them.

In an average year they each claimed €75,110.21 (Seventy five thousand one hundred and ten euro, and twenty-one cent).

That works out at €205.78 every single day, [Annual figure divided by 365].

Which equals €1440.46 per 7 days. [Daily figure multiplied by seven]

However, I know most years the Dáil sits just 96 days per year, so that means they claimed: €782.39 per sitting day. [Total figure divided by 3 then divided by 576 – which is 96 multiplied by six]

…but I also know TDs say they do crazy hours in their constituency. If I take it that they’ve worked every day except Sundays and the 9 public holidays for all six years, the figure is €247.07 per working day. [365 minus 52 (Sundays per year) and nine (Bank holidays per year), then multiplied by six, all divided into the total expenses figure of €1.3m, then divided by three]

Finally, I’ve calculated that if on every one of those days, (six days per week for six years, without exception – no holidays, no half-days, no sick leave) they worked for 12 hours, they’d be claiming €20.59 per hour. [€247.07 divided by 12]

Note: the minimum wage is €8.65. Jobs Seekers Allowance is around €200 per week. And as stated, the above is on top of large salaries.

What do you make of that? That’s some amount of phone calls, and some serious petrol and lunch bills if you ask me.

You can view the document I used to calculate these figures here.

Two things I’d like to know: Why did Ned O’Keeffe claim €675 just last year for an ISDN line. Those lines are out-dated and useless for nothing except radio interviews… and very rarely used for those as a phone line is almost always more than sufficient. They’re slightly quicker than dail-up for browsing the internet, and far slower than an off-the-shelf broadband package, what’s he using the line for so? It certainly doesn’t sound like he used it for the interview with Newstalk I drew attention to a few weeks ago. Remember? The one where he waffled about politicians being value for money and expenses keeping corruption to a minimum… I wonder if he’d appear on morning radio to defend his expenses now? Hmmm.

Also, what do the constituency offices of these three lads look like? They spent about €52,ooo each on their constituency offices between 2003 and 2008, the offices all must be century-old manor houses in need of constant maintenance if they cost that much to keep upright, surely?

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Footnote: The Sunday Tribune used the documents Gavin published here last week for their frontpage story and a double-page spread inside yesterday, taking the details to an audience larger than we could hope for here. Their report was followed up on RTÉ Radio too. I noticed BreakingNews.ie said “some newspapers” had reported the information, if you spotted them in papers other than the Trib, do let us know. In fact, if you notice what appears to be one of our stories in any media, whether we’re mentioned or not, throw us a mail [tips AT thestory DOT ie].

We’re not interested in invoicing or shaming those who don’t credit us (though we’re no fans of the latter), just in seeing how the information disseminates. Thus far we’re aware of mentions in the Sunday Times, Irish Times, Daily Mail, Sunday Tribune, Irish Examiner, and of course Gavin’s appearance on RTÉ’s Prime Time. Not bad for a project that only started seven weeks ago, but we’d like to keep track…

Expenses documents for Mary Harney

Ken Foxe of The Sunday Tribune has uploaded files relating to expenses claimed by Mary Harney. You can check out details by clicking the links he has supplied on his blog.

There is a massive amount of information there, far too much for one person to digest (for example “part I” is 123 pages long). I encourage you to scan through it at random and email Ken if you notice anything interesting. He is available at Ken DOT Foxe AT gmail DOT com.

If you are a blogger then you may also consider linking to his post to get more eyes on the documents. The more eyes, the better.

I have noted some people, both online and offline, have said the expenses stories, because they are based almost solely on FOIs, are examples of “lazy journalism”. Completely wrong. Try sending a random FOI on expenses and see how far you get. Writing a good FOI requires more than guesswork, it needs an understanding of how the system works, an eye on what is coming down the line, and a decent steer.

Ken, and it seems now, various other journalists, are still on the expenses case, and it is not going to stop at some point in the morning. Ministers need to make these documents available for public inspection immediately. Until they do, Ken, and others, including Gavin, will continue to FOI them – perhaps simply on a point of principle. Right now the easy choice for all ministers is to throw their expenses to the public, anything is just delaying the inevitable.

And to the Opposition, Joan Burton is the only person to put her expenses online. What are the rest of you up to? Nearly all TDs expenses are already in the public domain because the papers FOI them annually, why not put them online yourselves as a symbolic gesture? Anything less and people might get curious.

Mary Harney expenses files – Ken Foxe.com

Note: If there are any spelling mistakes or errors in this post they are due to my recent return from a city centre pub. Your correspondent is currently chugging a pint of water in a desperate but undoubtedly feeble attempt to avoid a mother of a hangover. I was told it works but remain highly sceptical. I am likely to report the results tomorrow via my Twitter stream.

Be assured, all drinks were paid for from your correspondents own wage packet.

I will not be answering phone calls tomorrow.

Your correspondent recommends Paulanger, if available.

Want to bypass our donations system? No problem

Recently I wrote about how the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO) assumed one of the largest political branches in the State, the Kevin Barry Cumann in UCD, was inactive. The post, which you can read here, includes one sentence which I want to expand upon…

“Unfortunately, they’re [SIPO] working with awful legislation, but doing an pretty poor job on top of that, at least in some areas, as I found out.”

To be honest, “awful legislation” doesn’t really do it justice. The rules on political donations are so terrible it seems they have been purposefully designed to make it easier for political parties to loop around their limitations, they’re that bad.

The dreamer in me has been telling for while not the write this post. “Don’t tell the good politicians how the bold ones work the system”, it screamed. The other 99% of me said, “fuck it, they all know about this anyway, it’s whether they chose to work it or not is the question”. So here, dear reader, I tell you how I understand our public representatives can work the donations system…
Continue reading “Want to bypass our donations system? No problem”

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.

TD/Senator expenses 2005 – 2008

For the record and as part of an ongoing FOI request, here are all expenses, allowances and salary figures of all TDs and Senators, 2005 – 2008. I received them today via email from the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission. We hope to digitise this data shortly. I also received the following note:

In relation to the break down of allowances I wish to clarify the following:

1. Telephone Allowance is paid as an annual allowance on a quarterly basis to all Members. The allocation of this allowance to specific telephone bills is a matter for each individual Member, consequently the allowance is not quantified into land line calls and mobile phone calls. Any expenses incurred by members over and above this allowance have to be met by the individual Member.

2. Each member is also entitled to 1,750 “Post Office Preferred, pre-paid DL (one third A4) sized envelopes each month. Any postal charges that are over and above the pre-paid amount must be paid by the Member at the time of posting.

3. Daily Allowances appear within the Travel and Subsistence amounts on the records of any Member who is claiming Daily Allowance, this allowance is a flat rate allowance and there is no mileage element. Members who live within 15 miles of Leinster House can only claim this Daily Allowance.

4. The Travel and Subsistence Allowance for Members is paid as a combined figure through our financial management system and appears in the record as one monetary amount, consequently the record as released will give an overall figure for Travel and Subsistence in each subsequent year.

5. The Allowance to attend in the Houses for the purpose of conducting parliamentary business with other Members and the allowance to use the House facilities are again paid through our Financial Management System. These allowances are processed with the travel and overnight element of the claim, consequently they again appear within the Travel and Subsistence record as a monetary amount in the overall record. There are 25 nights allowed for using the House facilities and 5 nights for conducting parliamentary business.

6. Payments made in a given year can relate to a claim period for the same or a previous year.

7. Office and position holders have higher allowances due to the higher expenses they are deemed to have incurred.

Please note that former Members of the Oireachtas, Mr Tony Gregory T.D., Mr Joe Sherlock and Mr. Seamus Brennan T.D. (former Minister) and Senators Tony Kett, Kate Walsh, Peter Callanan details of whose expenses are included, have since died.

I would like to draw your attention to an administrative error which occurred in the payment of the Constituency Office Maintenance Allowance (COMA) which was beyond the control of Members. This allowance was overpaid by €931.83 in 2008 to re-elected Members due to a calculation error. As the COMA is paid in arrears, this overpayment took place in January 2008 and it therefore appears in the 2008 records. Accordingly the COMA for 2008 is overstated by €931.83. All Members affected were notified and all monies have been fully recouped. You should also note that some Coma payments made in 2008 related to expenses incurred in previous years which were not claimed until 2008.

You should also be aware that while some Members have monies showing in two positions, e.g. whip to a party and a committee position this signifies that they held these positions at different times in the year. The Oireachtas (Allowances to Members) and Ministerial, Parliamentary, Judicial and Court Officers Amendment Act 1998, states under Section 6(2) that “If a member is eligible during any period to receive more than one of the allowances provided for in sections 3, 4 and 5 of this Act, only the higher or highest of those allowances shall be paid or payable to the member during that period”.

I would also like to clarify that the amounts which appear for Members in receipt of Committee Allowances for 2008 in most cases are not an annual figure as various Members were allocated positions in 2007 and payment for these positions were not paid until 2008. The figures which appear are not reflective of annual amounts. I have included a schedule of specified position amounts which were in effect during 2008 for your assistance.

You should also be aware that following a Boundary Commission Report in 2007, several constituency boundaries were revised and re-categorised. All Members in constituencies which were re-categorised were reverted to the lowest rate and were subsequently repaid the correct allowance in January 2008, which in some cases included arrears. The figures which appear in 2008 again for some Members are not reflective of an annual amount.

Explanatory document

Deputies salary and allowances 2005
Deputies salary and allowances 2006
Deputies salary and allowances 2007
Deputies salary and allowances 2008

Senator salary and allowances 2005
Senator salary and allowances 2006
Senator salary and allowances 2007
Senator salary and allowances 2008