Month: November 2018

THE IDA prepared a series of briefing documents for their executives after multinational companies raised concerns over “constraints” and “clear market failures” in the residential property market.

Executives from the IDA were advised to say that the country’s housing shortage was “not unique to Ireland” in the guidance documents.

The investment agency prepared a series of briefings for staff on what to say when issues around rising property prices, spiralling rents, and homelessness came up for discussion.

Copies of the briefings reveal that the IDA prepared data showing that monthly rents in Dublin were still competitive by international standards.

According to the latest briefing report from September, the price for a small “one person apartment” in Dublin came in at just above €1,000 per month.

Taking figures from the Nestpick ‘Furnished Apartment Index’, this meant Dublin was almost half the price of San Francisco, and significantly less than other major investment centres including New York, Hong Kong, and London.

The briefings also emphasised that rent prices in regional locations in Ireland were “very competitive”.

While the standardised average rent in Dublin was stated to be €1,436-per-month – the average rents in Cork and Galway were just over €1,000 while in Waterford, it was €674, according to the records.

For property purchases, the briefing said that average residential prices in Dublin – at just over €400,000 – were “competitive compared to competing larger cities”.

Average property prices were at least 50% higher in Paris, Zurich, and Geneva, according to the documents prepared by the IDA.

Ireland did not compare so well to cities like Milan, Prague, and Frankfurt however.

“Regional cities compare exceptionally well to other competing cities,” the briefing said with average prices in Cork and Galway below €200,000 according to their charts.

The briefing also said there were “hugely positive trends” in the residential property market.

It said that first-time buyers in Ireland were in a much better financial situation now than they were at the height of the boom.

“The average first-time buyer working couple uses 21.2% of their net income to fund a mortgage in Ireland – this was 32% in 2007,” the briefing explained.

The briefing also boasted that new home completions had reached 16,274 units over the past twelve months, an increase of 256% when compared to 2013.

Later on in the document, it was pointed out that 2013 had been the “bottom” when just 8,300 homes were completed, and that this had fallen from 77,600 at the start of the recession.

The “key messages” document also said the government had introduced rent pressure zones and was “committed to meeting the demand” for new housing.

The briefings are based on a series of quarterly housing reports that were commissioned by the IDA from the estate agent Lisney.

The reports – which will cost €24,000 over a two-year period – were started specifically because of concerns from large companies about the Irish property market, according to documents obtained under FOI.

One internal record from March this year explained in stark terms why they had been commissioned.

It said: “Due to the current constraints in the residential property market and clear market failures, a number of multinational companies currently in Ireland have indicated to IDA that property and most notably residential property is one factor challenging increased investment in a number of locations throughout Ireland.”

In a statement, the IDA said the briefing documents were prepared to inform executives about housing conditions across Ireland and provide international comparisons.

They said: “Our clients operate in an international context and it is IDA Ireland’s role to consider how we compare to our competitors.

“IDA Ireland’s clients take a long-term view on investment and are continuing to invest in large numbers in Dublin, as evidenced by some of the large announcements made this year.”

They said they believed Ireland’s housing market remained competitive and that it competes with cities like San Francisco, Zurich, London, and New York for foreign direct investment.

SEVEN former HSE consultants and staff have received lump sum retirement pay-outs of more than €300,000 over the past three years.

The enormous golden handshakes are part of close to €19 million in lump sums paid to high-earning former consultants and senior officials from the health service since 2016.

Altogether, 80 former HSE staff qualified for payoffs worth at least €160,000 during the last three years, with the average payment working out at €237,000.

Forty six of them got lump sums worth between €200,000 and €300,000, according to figures obtained following an FOI request.

The single highest earning pensioner – who retired in 2017 – was given €357,738 in a lump sum payment and is now in receipt of an annual pension worth €119,246, according to the figures.

The information was released by the HSE in heavily anonymised format, listing how much is being paid but not the identity or job title of those who received the money.

A second person who retired earlier this year was given a €356,981 lump sum payment and their annual pension is worth €118,993.

The third highest earner got a payoff of just over €350,000 and will get €116,823 each year for the rest of their lives.

Altogether, six retired HSE staff will be entitled to life-time pensions worth at least €100,000 annually after finishing work with the health service since the beginning of 2016.

The current cost of yearly pensions for the eighty recently-retired pensioners is just over €6 million, assuming none have died in the meantime.

Some of those listed with comparatively smaller annual pensions still managed to get very hefty lump sums.

In one instance, a former staff member was given €195,372 in a payoff even though their pension entitlement is listed as €47,047-a-year.

The cost of paying pensions for ex-health service staff was around €880 million last year from an overall budget of around €14 billion. It is expected the pension bill could rise to €1 billion by 2020.

Finance expert Catriona Ceitin, who was the first to reveal the extent of pension payments for former FÁS boss Roddy Molloy, said: “As these pensions are based on final salary, often the amount paid during retirement can exceed the salaries received during the entire working life, this is even more prevalent where large salary increases have been granted close to retirement.

“The personal contributions paid during the working life do not represent the value of the pensions and lump sums received,” she said.

The level of lump sum pay-out in the HSE has at least fallen in recent years with one retired employee from 2011 receiving €414,910 and an annual pension of €138,303.

The lump sums in the HSE are far higher than those paid out to ordinary civil servants working in government departments and other public bodies.

In a list of the highest pensions from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform released under FOI, the single largest lump sum paid was €298,708.

That was paid to a senior retiring civil servant in 2017, along with an annual pension for life of €107,795, according to the records.

The Department said their figures covered almost all civil servants, except those employed by the Houses of the Oireachtas and a handful of other public bodies.

Altogether, €11 million in golden handshakes were shared by 75 different ex-civil servants, with each receiving an average of just over €146,000 each.

Thirty six of them got at least €200,000 each while nine are in receipt of annual pensions worth in excess of €90,000 every year.

The Department said that the figures provided did not however, reflect “abatement” where former civil servants were taken on again to work in the public sector.

When that happens, the combined pension and pay for the new role cannot exceed what the person was earning prior to retirement.

In a statement, the HSE said these final salary pensions were calculated based on years of service, the final salary, and the best three years of consecutive pensionable allowances.

“In general, these schemes cover employees who were employed on or before [1 January 2013],” they said. Those employed since then are part of the far less generous single public service pension scheme.

The HSE said: “The introduction of the [single scheme] … is a step towards managing the public service pensions bill since it is a career average scheme rather than a final salary scheme which will ultimately lead to a reduction in benefits payable.”

Additional contributions and increased pension ages will also help cut the annual pension bill, they said.

THE former Lord Mayor of Cork flew to Rome for a “Papal audience” on a trip funded by the taxpayer earlier this year.

Fianna Fáil’s Tony Fitzgerald travelled with his wife Georgina to the Eternal City to meet with Pope Francis where they gifted the Pontiff a book of photography of Cork City and a “personal present” of hand-carved candleholders.

The meeting with the Pope was arranged through the Cork and Ross Diocesan Office, according to Cork City Council.

The two-night trip – on which the city council’s chief executive Ann Doherty also travelled – ended up costing the council €1,963 in flights and accommodation, according to records.

This included €777 for three return flights to Rome and €1,186 for two rooms for two nights at the four-star Michelangelo in the Italian capital.

The hotel – with its “cosmopolitan style, classical grandeur, and timeless appeal” – is just a short stroll from the Vatican and St Peter’s Square.

Also paid for was a €273 bill for an official dinner at the Ristorante The Dome and a €433 subsistence claim by the mayor, according to records released by the council.

Mr Fitzgerald said the trip was one of several he had taken during his mayoralty as part of his efforts to represent the city “locally, nationally, and internationally”.

He said: “My year was focused on supporting and visiting local communities, charity events, companies and groups, communities that support foreign direct investment, meeting our President, Taoiseach, Ministers, Ambassadors, Heads of State, Lord Mayors, Mayors, Royal Family – promoting Cork as a place to visit and live … and work.

“Visiting Rome and meeting Pope Francis and those at the Irish College was an example of that. As required, the trip was approved by council retrospectively on the 14th May without any issue being made by the members … and without any issue being raised.”

The Rome trip ended up being scaled back, first because of a strike by air traffic controllers and later because of severe weather, according to council records.

On May 9, the mayor was greeted at the Vatican by Monsignor John Kennedy before a ceremony and an “engagement with Pope Francis, including exchange of gifts”.

Mr Fitzgerald visited the Irish College then where he met students from Cork, Irish ex-pats, and Monsignor Joe Murphy, head of protocol at the Vatican.

The following day, he was given a “walking tour” of Rome, which according to a suggested itinerary could include a visit to the Colosseum or some shopping.

An invitation email had said: “You must walk down the Via dei Condotti, where all the designer shops are located. You would want to have your chequebooks or cards ready, if you shop here!”

The Rome trip in May was one of three taken in quick succession by the former Lord Mayor. He also travelled to the United States in late February – to Newport, Boston, and New York – and to California in April.

Mr Fitzgerald led a delegation of thirteen councillors and staff to San Francisco in April. The trip, detailed here, ended up costing €50,000 and proved controversial locally.

The lord mayor had also travelled to the United States earlier in the year when he visited the east coast on a nine-night trip.

Again accompanied by his wife, their airfares for the trip cost €1,746 with another €980 spent on seven nights of hotel accommodation at the four-star Loews in Boston and the Affinia Shelburne in New York.

Two nights of accommodation were provided for free in Newport, Rhode Island by the local tourism authority. Two officials from the local authority accompanied the mayor for the first three nights of the trip.

On his return, Mr Fitzgerald made a subsistence claim of €1,326 – four days in Boston at the rate of US$168.25 per diem and six days in New York at US$159.25.

He said the eight day trip had combined “three visits into one trip” and had involved around thirty separate engagements over there.

“Travelling on three different trips would not have been practical and would have incurred extra expenses,” he said.

As well as promoting Cork in the region, he also visited Irish community members, met two city mayors, launched a public lecture series, attended a parade, paid his respects at the World Trade Centre, and attended an annual dinner dance of the Cork Association New York.

TRANSPORT minister Shane Ross and his advisers believed anxieties over a revamp of Dublin’s bus network were being deliberately stirred up for political reasons.

The Minister for Transport – who was later accused of having disowned the capital’s BusConnects plan – was under “considerable pressure” over the redesigned network according to internal emails.

Records released under FOI reveal how the plans were causing concern for “southsiders” as Mr Ross was inundated with questions about how it would work.

For one single stretch of route between St Vincent’s Hospital and the minister’s constituency in Stepaside and Sandyford, Minister Ross received more than a hundred inquiries.

The National Transport Authority (NTA) were surprised at the numbers involved. “A hundred queries relating to that particular stretch?” asked their head of public affairs on August 15.

Mr Ross’ media advisor Carol Hunt replied: “Between Ecorr [e-correspondence]/[Minister’s] office and constituency – yes … getting to St Vincent’s [Hospital] seems to be worrying a lot of southsiders.”

In follow-up emails to the NTA in early September, Ms Hunt explained that the minister was getting asked questions about changes to the bus network “pretty much every time he ventures into the constituency”.

“Apologies for so many individual queries,” she said, “but there’s a lot of folk managing to stir up [a] lot of anxiety about the future of routes – for political purposes.”

She said that when people were given accurate information about what the revamp would actually involve that it was a considerable help.

Midway through September, Minister Ross and his team had begun to provide letters to individual households in “certain affected areas” outlining the changes that would impact them.

However, a new issue had arisen in an area along Stonemason’s Way near Marlay Park in the heart of the transport minister’s constituency.

“From our read of it, the current plans would seem to have a detrimental effect on a largely elderly community,” wrote Aisling Dunne, another of Mr Ross’ special advisers on September 11.

“Is there anything positive that we might be able to say to residents to assure them that the situation will not be as negative as they fear?”

Just over a week later, Minister Ross was reported in the Irish Times to have told a constituency meeting on September 19 that he had nothing to do with the BusConnects plan and had no responsibility for the National Transport Authority.

Asked about the documents, Mr Ross said that as a local representative, he had made submissions on behalf of his constituents about “specific concerns”, as had many other politicians.

He said: “During the consultation period it emerged that both constituents and other bus users from all over Dublin had been given erroneous information regarding the BusConnects project, some of which caused unnecessary anxiety.

“My staff were at pains to correct [this] – with the help of factual information from the NTA.

“It was most unfortunate that some individuals and groups chose to disseminate incorrect information and cause unnecessary worry for commuters, one can only presume for their own political reasons.”

Separately, documents released under FOI reveal Minister Ross was being briefed on the bus revamp plan by the National Transport Authority from as early as March 2017.

A lengthy briefing on a wider proposal called ‘Bus-21’ was prepared for his department, which included an explanation of how the fundamental rethink of the network would work.

“That major redesign of the bus network in the Dublin area is now underway,” it said, “assisted by a US firm who specialise in the design of major urban transit networks”.

In April 2017, he was also talked through a PowerPoint presentation on how BusConnects would work.

He was told it would involve taking some people’s front gardens, the removal of mature trees and parking, as well as new traffic restrictions on certain roads and streets.

The briefing paper also said the bus network would be “radically changed, but radically improved”.

It said the idea was to make the system more efficient, to carry more passengers and to make interchange between services much easier.

The minister was also talked through a similar project that had taken place in Houston, and which involved the same transport consultant Jarrett Walker as was being used by the NTA.

TWENTY three developers are still in receipt of incomes from NAMA with the highest earning receiving €195,000 per year.

Three more get an “allowance” worth €180,000 annually according to figures released under FOI by the asset management agency.

Altogether, the 23 developers – who manage sites on behalf of NAMA – receive €2.3 million, an average of €100,000 each.

Of them, ten received a six-figure salary with one on €133,000, two getting €120,000, another on €110,000, and two developers paid €100,000 each.

NAMA said the payment of allowances to “debtors” was part of its efforts to get the best possible financial returns from its loans.

A spokesman said: “[We have] consistently stated since 2010 that, where [NAMA] is able to work with debtors, arrangements agreed with debtors are more cost-effective for the taxpayer than the alternative of appointing external asset managers or receivers.

“It is also a more efficient approach as debtors are very familiar with the assets under their control.”

The number of developers working directly with NAMA has dropped considerably over the years and was at one stage well in excess of 100.

The latest figures also list thirteen developers who are in receipt of annual allowances worth under €100,000.

According to the data, one is on €95,000 while four are on salaries of between €80,000 and €90,000, at an average rate of €83,000 each.

Three developers received just over €70,000 in payments while two were on allowances worth between €60,000 and €70,000.

The lowest earners were in the €30,000-€40,000 category, where two received €65,000 between them, or an average of €32,500 each.

In an information note accompanying the figures, NAMA said it technically did not pay “salaries” to the developers as it was not their employer.

It said that in certain cases they allow “debtors” to keep part of the income from their profit-making assets to pay overheads for the “preservation and enhancement of the value of property securing its loans”.

They said these overheads generally covered costs for repair and maintenance, and insurance premiums, local authority rates, and professional fees.

“These costs may include an allowance for the remuneration of debtors and their staff to manage their assets,” they said.

“This occurs in cases where the Agency decides that this is the most cost effective option in terms of maximising the return for the State in line with NAMA’s statutory objective.”

At its peak around 2014, the asset management agency was paying €11 million in allowances to 134 different developers with three of them in receipt of more than €200,000.

NAMA chief executive Brendan McDonagh defended the costs involved at the time saying it would be much more expensive to appoint receivers, who would then appoint an asset manager with costs rising exponentially.

The agency also rejected proposals that were considered unrealistic with one developer famously looking for a €1.5 million annual salary back in 2010.

“The jets, the yachts, the Bentleys will not be supported by NAMA,” said agency chairman Frank Daly at the time.