Ruairi Quinn expense claims and insufficient transparency

Following on from a series of postings about the mileage expense claims of Ruairi Quinn (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), the blogger Anthony Sheridan [Disclosure: Anthony is the uncle of Gavin, the other half of thestory.ie] made a complaint to the Standards in Public Office Commission seeking an investigation.

They returned to him last week to say that there was ‘no basis on which to pursue the matter’.

What they did say was damning in its own right however, making very clear that the rules for Ministerial mileage were ‘not sufficiently transparent’.

In the case of Mr Quinn, it simply involved stating a monthly mileage total and cashing the resultant cheque. There were no further inquiries, no petrol receipts, no odometer readings or anything of that nature sought to back up the claims. As later was discovered, the reason for the high claims stemmed largely from his travel to and from his holiday home in Roundstone, Co Galway, something the Education Minister was curiously reluctant to admit when interviewed on RTE and Newstalk.

The Standards Commission have now written to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to ask that the rules on this type of claim be changed. They have suggested that detailed claims for each and every journey – as applies to every other public servant in the country – should have to be made by Ministers.

Two observations from all this. Why is it that the systems governing expense claims by politicians are always so vague? The cynic might suggest having no rules is useful because how can you break a rule that does not exist. It is hard not to be cynical.

Credit where credit is due to the Standards Commission, as they have put Minister Brendan Howlin under intense pressure to make the change and force the country’s most senior politicians to declare their mileage journey by journey, as always should have been the case.

The letter from SIPO to Mr Sheridan follows in full:

Dear Mr. Sheridan,

I refer to your complaint of 27 February 2012 under section 22 of the Ethics in Public Office Act 1995 and section 4 of the Standards in Public Office Act 2001 in relation to recent newspaper articles concerning claims by Mr. Ruairi Quinn TD, Minister for Education and Skills for traveling expenses in July and August 2011.

The Standards Commission has considered the complaint in light of the contents of letters and enclosures from Minister Quinn and from Mr. Sean O Foghlu, Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills.

It considered the matter in light of the provisions of section 4 (1) (a) of the Standards in Public Office Act 2001, i.e. as to whether the Minister’s actions as complained of constituted a ‘specified act’ or acts.

It has decided that there is no basis on which to pursue the matter.

Having regard to a letter dated 7 February 1984 from the Secretary to the Government to Secretaries of Government Departments for the notice of Ministers which refers to payment of mileage allowances to Ministers using their own private cars in respect of “the total mileage travelled and related to the office”, the Commission noted that the rules allow for the use by officials of the Ministers’ car on official business.

Having regard to the issues which were raised in the complaint, the Standards Commission considers that the rules in place for claims by Ministers for traveling expenses incurred on official business while using their own private cars are not sufficiently transparent.

It has therefore written to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform to request that he amend the rules under which Ministers claim traveling expenses for using their own private cars on official business.

It suggests that detailed claims in respect of each journey undertaken in the car along with the purpose of the journey be required in line with the rules which apply to public servants generally.

Yours sincerely

Brian McKevitt

Commission  Secretariat

Ruairi Quinn and his Galway holiday home mileage claims

The mystery of Ruairi Quinn’s unusually high mileage has finally been solved, as he was claiming for trips to and from his holiday home.

Mr Quinn, when interviewed on RTE and Newstalk last month, explained that the reason the claims were so high was because officials used the car and not all official travel was marked in his diary.

The background to this story is here and here and his diary entries and expense claims can be found in previous posts on thestory.ie here and here.

Copies of expense claims submitted by his driver now show that the main reason his mileage was so high in July and August was because he was claiming for trips to and from Roundstone, Co Galway where he has a holiday home.

In total, there were 12 claims either to and from Galway, many of them listed as Roundstone.

In many of the cases, the car would travel to Galway to collect him and bring him to events.

On a couple of occasions, it appears as if Mr Quinn was simply driven to Roundstone with no official business listed for those days.

Mr Quinn also made a claim for mileage (while his driver claimed subsistence) for the Labour Party think-tank in Tullow, Co Carlow last year.

The claim form from the Department of Education specifies that all mileage must be carried out as part of official Ministerial duties.

Asked whether this type of claim was acceptable, particularly in light of Labour’s previously hard-line policy on expenses claimed by Ivor Callely and John O’Donoghue amongst others, one of Mr Quinn’s special advisers said he was working in the car during these journeys.

His spokeswoman said: “All of Minister Quinn’s claims for expenses and mileage are strictly in accordance with the arrangements outlined by the government.

The Minister is often required to interrupt his holidays to attend official functions and undertake government business.

In order to carry out his considerable workload at the Department of Education and Skills, the Minister carries confidential official papers in the car and works while on route to his destinations.  This is considered to be official travel.

The drivers of the minister are entitled to claim for subsistence when on official business, again all of which are in accordance with the guidelines.

As has been pointed out to you on several occasions, the Minister’s electronic diary does not reflect all official uses of the car.

Here are the documents:



The Ruairi Quinn Mileage Claims – Part Two

Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn has been asked to explain a second expenses claim, this time relating to a month in which he spent 22 days on holiday.

In August 2011, Mr Quinn signed off on a claim for 2,800 kilometres worth around E800 despite the fact his official diary shows that he was working for only nine days that month.

That works out at an average of 311 kilometres every day, the equivalent of a round-trip to Waterford on each working day, about four hours driving time.

His diary makes apparent less than 1,000 kilometres of the total that was claimed for, including two trips to Maynooth and a trip to Clifden.

Here is the detailed story I wrote about this expense claim.

Also published here are Minister Quinn’s expense claims for the period between March and the end of August 2011, and those of his colleague in the Department of Education Ciaran Cannon over a similar period.

Ruairi Quinn’s official diary for August 2011, which lists him as having been on holiday from August 6 to August 28 – apart from a single day – can also be examined.

Here are the claims:


July diary:


August diary:


Ruairi Quinn and his mileage claim

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has been asked this week to explain a mileage claim he made in July of last year.

For the month in question, Mr Quinn claimed for 5,100 kilometres (worth €1,451). Searching his official diary for the month however, shows that Mr Quinn had only a single engagement outside of Dublin, when he spoke at the MacGill summer school in Co Donegal.

On six of the days that month, he was on an official visit to Chicago while a further seven days are either specifically marked “private” or simply left blank.

Calculating all of the mileage that was apparent from the diary comes to less than 1,000 kilometres of the total, making it impossible for the public or media to identify how the other 4,100kms were incurred.

Over the course of three weeks, a number of queries were submitted to Mr Quinn’s Department, the upshot of which was that the official diary does not account for all travel.

Subsequently, in radio interviews on Newstalk and RTE this week, Mr Quinn said that some of the mileage relates to other people, including civil servants and so on, traveling on his behalf.

Here is the lengthy story that I wrote based on the documents.

The diary and expense claims for the month can be found here:



At the very least, this shows an expense system that is badly in need of reform with simply no way of retrospectively checking how the mileage was incurred.

There are few, if any, private companies (or indeed public bodies) that would simply allow readings from an odometer to count for the purposes of paying out a not insignificant amount of money. Almost all would seek a detailed list of journeys conducted, their purpose, their date and so on. And when people talk of vouched expenses, that is the type of system they mean.

Vouched expenses does not mean a TD making a claim, then holding on to a receipt, with only a 10% possibility of being audited. Nor does it mean simply entering a round figure on an expense sheet without supporting documentation.

Howlin's compromise on pay rejected by the Taoiseach

Brendan Howlin, the Minister responsible for overseeing a pay cap for special advisers, tried repeatedly to come to a compromise agreement on the pay of Ciaran Conlon.

The negotiations over the bumper salary of €127,000 that was finally set out for Mr Conlon show that Brendan Howlin had serious concerns about it and did not believe it could be justified under any circumstances.

He also said it would set a poor example and would provoke other Ministers into seeking higher pay for their advisers, or ask for salaries – that were already agreed – to be renegotiated.

The new emails, obtained from the Department of Public Enterprise, show that the Department of the Taoiseach repeatedly intervened in the process and would not accept a compromise of ca €115,000, which Howlin had pleaded with them to accept.

It would have presented a face-saving solution to the sensitive problem and was still, as Mr Howlin himself pointed out, a 25% increase on the original offer. In the end, he caved in following a demand that came directly from the Taoiseach [see below post].

Some of the documents on which this are based are posted here, with the more important exchanges coming towards the end.

A lengthy story that I wrote, which outlines it in further detail, is available here:

These new emails, now released by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform,  should, to my mind, have already been released under an FoI request that was submitted to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation about the same matter.

That they were not is suspicious. The decision on their release is currently being appealed and will in due course be made known to the Information Commissioner.


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: