HSE expense claims South, Northwest, West, Midlands

As promised, more of the expenses data released by the HSE:

Contextual documents:

FOI letter
Internal review decision
Expenses context

HSE South: €39,532,886.69, 23,415 rows, 15.18% of the total claimed

HSE South 2007
HSE South 2008
HSE South 2009
HSE South 2010 (to end June)

HSE Northwest: €35,786,735.08, 16,715 rows, 13.74% of the total claimed

HSE Northwest 2007
HSE Northwest 2008
HSE Northwest 2009
HSE Northwest 2010 (to end June)

HSE Midlands: €31,470,046.22, 14,807 rows, 12.08% of the total claimed

HSE Midlands 2007
HSE Midlands 2008
HSE Midlands 2009
HSE Midlands 2010 (to end June)

HSE West: €45,275,421.66, 20,298 rows, 17.38% of the total claimed (the largest)

HSE West 2007

HSE West 2008
HSE West 2009
HSE West 2010 (to end June)
HSE West PH_T&S 2007 to 2010

HSE East (Right click and save as.., or open in new tab)

HSE East 2007
HSE East 2008
HSE East 2009
HSE East 2010 (to end June)
HSE East AP 2007
HSE East AP 2008
HSE East AP 2009
HSE East AP 2010 (to end June)

HSE Southeast
HSE Southeast, all years

HSE Midwest

HSE Midwest all years

HSE Northeast

HSE Northeast Jan – Mar 2007
HSE Northeast Apr – Jun 2007
HSE Northeast Jul – Sep 2007
HSE Northeast Oct – Dec 2007

HSE Northeast Jan – Mar 2008
HSE Northeast Apr – Jun 2008
HSE Northeast Jul – Sep 2008
HSE Northeast Oct – Dec 2008

HSE Northeast 2009

HSE Northeast Jan – Mar 2010
HSE Northeast Apr – Jun 2010

HSE expense claims 2007 to 2010

In what we believe to be the largest single release of information since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act 12 years ago, the Health Service Executive (HSE) has released details of expense claims for everyone in the organisation over the past three and a half years. The datasets contain 316,307 rows, totaling €260,450,676.60 (€260.4m) broken down by HSE region, and in some cases by hospital/grade.

It has been difficult to calculate just how many people this relates to, but given that 100,000 people work for the HSE, we suspect the data relates to a great many people working within the organisation. And we should make clear that as far as we are concerned the vast, vast majority of claims are entirely legitimate. What we believe, and as we have always stated, is that this kind of information should be published as a matter of course by all public bodies, in open accessible formats, and on a regular basis.

There are a number of issues, however. Firstly the data varies. Each HSE region has released the data in different ways. Some have released more columns than others, some have helpfully condensed the data into single sheets. Others have released poorly, with the record accidentally cut short within cells.

Some readers have expressed surprise to us at the length of time it takes to get releases, so we will try to describe this more within blog posts. In this case the process took 3 months. The data element of our request went well over the 20 days allowed for reply and as a result we sought an internal review on the basis of deemed refusal. The HSE then met, and decided to release. We wish to praise the HSE in one significant respect. The HSE released the data in spreadsheets (xls as requested), on a memory stick and then sent the data via courier (though post would have been fine). If all bodies acted in this way it would help us all. Bodies who release data as PDFs take note.

We have also been made aware that as is common practice within public bodies, a notification was posted to the HSE internal intranet, informing all staff that expenses data had been released to a Mr Gavin Sheridan, and it would shortly be in the public domain. This has led to a significant number of Google searches over the past couple of weeks from HSE domains.

We are going to release this data in the unclean and raw way in which it was released. It was released several weeks ago to us and myself and Mark have spent a good deal of time cleaning the sheets and analysing them for potential follow-up (hence the quiet period around here of late). We will release those versions soon. We will be seeking the technical assistance of others in further cleaning and combining the data into a searchable database for any member of the public (or of the HSE) to access.

To kick things off, and in no particular order. Here are the expense claims of HSE South for 2007 and 2008:

Contextual documents:

FOI letter
Internal review decision
Expenses context

HSE South: €39,532,886.69, 23,415 rows, 15.18% of the total claimed

HSE South 2007
HSE South 2008
HSE South 2009
HSE South 2010 (to end June)

HSE Northwest: €35,786,735.08, 16,715 rows, 13.74% of the total claimed

HSE Northwest 2007
HSE Northwest 2008
HSE Northwest 2009
HSE Northwest 2010 (to end June)

HSE Midlands: €31,470,046.22, 14,807 rows, 12.08% of the total claimed

HSE Midlands 2007
HSE Midlands 2008
HSE Midlands 2009
HSE Midlands 2010 (to end June)

HSE West: €45,275,421.66, 20,298 rows, 17.38% of the total claimed (the largest)

HSE West 2007

HSE West 2008
HSE West 2009
HSE West 2010 (to end June)
HSE West PH_T&S 2007 to 2010

HSE East (Right click and save as.., or open in new tab)

HSE East 2007
HSE East 2008
HSE East 2009
HSE East 2010 (to end June)
HSE East AP 2007
HSE East AP 2008
HSE East AP 2009
HSE East AP 2010 (to end June)

HSE Southeast
HSE Southeast, all years

HSE Midwest

HSE Midwest all years

HSE Northeast

HSE Northeast Jan – Mar 2007
HSE Northeast Apr – Jun 2007
HSE Northeast Jul – Sep 2007
HSE Northeast Oct – Dec 2007

HSE Northeast Jan – Mar 2008
HSE Northeast Apr – Jun 2008
HSE Northeast Jul – Sep 2008
HSE Northeast Oct – Dec 2008

HSE Northeast Jan – Mar 2009
HSE Northeast Apr – Jun 2009
HSE Northeast Jul – Sep 2009
HSE Northeast Oct – Dec 2009

HSE Northeast Jan – Mar 2010
HSE Northeast Apr – Jun 2010

Oireachtas travel costs 2009

These are costs related to Irish Parliamentary Association (IPA) travel for 2009. Released by the Houses of the Oireachtas Commission.

Spreadsheet

These are costs related to Council of Europe, OSCE, PACE, Western European Union, EuroMed and EMPA. The total is €108,671.80. The data includes trips by Frank Fahey, Ivor Callely, Pat Breen, Joe O’Reilly, Terry Leyden and Cecilia Keaveney.

Spreadsheet

Department of Foreign Affairs Expenses data 2009

As previously mentioned I am converting expenses data sent to me in PDF form back into spreadsheets. 2009 is the first. You might notice some missing data in the last few rows of the 13,388 claims – I will remedy this later this evening – sometimes the conversion process is a bit wonky. The database contains €1.65m of expense claims for 2009.

You can look at the data on Socrata or download it from there

Powered by Socrata

This is the same figures broken down by payee, in order of size of total expense claim:

And the same under the mileage heading:

And a bar chart showing mileage claimants:

And a pie chart showing in what categories expenses are claimed:

And the spreadsheet for categories:

Callely phone claims – original documents

Luke Byrne of the Mail on Sunday, who penned the original story related to the mobile phone expense claims of Senator Ivor Callely on Sunday, has been kind enough to pass on the original documents received from his FOI request. I have run an OCR process on the documents, and combined them into one PDF.

A declaration on the claims form states:

I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THE EXPENSES CLAIMED HAVE BEEN ACTUALLY AND NECESSARILY INCURRED BY ME IN RELATION TO MY MEMBERSHIP OF DAIL EIREANN AND THE PARTICULARS FURNISHED HEREIN ARE IN ALL RESPECTS TRUE.

This is signed and dated by Mr Callely on each claim form.

The company on the headed paper, which gives its company number at the bottom of the document (150878), put out a notice in February 1994 that a liquidator was being appointed. You can read the company’s submissions on the CRO website. The company was subsequently dissolved. The claim forms were stamped by the Oireachtas on November 21 and 22, 2007. Another document is the certificate showing that the company was wound up by the Examiner’s Office.

Here are the documents:


Oireachtas staff expenses data 2004 to 2010

While an appeal is currently pending with the Information Commissioner in relation a request seeking an export of the entire financial management system in use at the Houses of the Oireachtas, the Oireachtas were kind enough to release a portion of the information sought. These databases contain the expense claims of staff at the House of the Oireachtas under three headings, Committee Travel, Interparliamentary Travel and Other staff Travel for 2004 to 2010, in about 15,000 rows.

These spreadsheets are published “as is”, with one exception. I have temporarily removed the column for date of the claim, because Google Spreadsheets seems to be having issues converting some of the cell dates, and is giving incorrect dates. I will fix this, and publish later.

Below you will see the decision letter which explains some of the column headings – please read this before you look at the spreadsheets as it contains important provisos and explanations.

Decision letter

Oireachtas Interparliamentary Travel staff expenses
Oireachtas Committee Travel staff expenses
Oireachtas Other staff travel expenses

The spreadsheets themselves are in need of cleaning (subtotals are included in the Amount column for example).

Dick Roche claimed €50k in mileage in two years

The Minister of State with special responsibility for European Affairs at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Dick Roche, claimed over €50,000 in “mileage costs” from his Department over two years – the highest total mileage claim of anyone at the Department over that period.

According to a database released under the Freedom of Information Act, Mr Roche ranks first for mileage claims for the entire department for both 2008 and 2009. In 2008 he claimed €28,466.97 in mileage costs, while in 2009 Mr Roche claimed €21,563.56 under the same heading – a total of €50,030.53.

In 2009 a total of €157,466.02 was claimed by Department of Foreign Affairs staff under the mileage cost heading, with Mr Roche’s claims accounting for over 13% of the cost of all mileage claims in that year. In 2008 Mr Roche claimed 11% of the €268,403.34 of all mileage costs at the Department. Mr Roche was appointed Minister of State at the Department after the 2002 general election and was reappointed in 2007.

Mr Roche’s senior at the Department, Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin did not make any claims for mileage costs. His total claims for 2009 were €2,662.63, mostly for “subsistence costs”. Mr Martin has the use of a Ministerial car. The next highest claimant of mileage expenses after Mr Roche in 2008 was Patrick J Kelly, who claimed €10,025.40.

Under all expense headings, other staff at the Department include Ambassador to Turkey Thomas Russell, who claimed €16,784.28 in 2009. Ambassador to Australia Mairtin O’Fainin claimed €16,584.45 in 2009, Ambassador to Egypt Richard O’Brien claimed €15,559.16, Francis Rickard claimed €15,406.94 and Second Secretary at the Irish embassy in Abu Dhabi Robert O’Driscoll claimed €14,478.93 in 2009.

The Department press office said as far as it was aware Mr Roche does not employ the services of a driver and does not have a ministerial car at his disposal. Mr Roche is based in Bray, Co Wicklow, 20km from Dublin city centre. However Mr Roche was heavily involved in campaigning for the Lisbon Treaty in both 2008 and 2009. In 2007 his mileage claims totalled under €13,000. Mr Roche’s involvement in the campaign could have had a significant effect on his claims. According to SIPO “The use of Ministerial cars, including drivers, by Ministers (not Ministers of State) during the election period, is not an election expense as the cars and drivers are provided as a security measure and Ministers are required to use them at all times.”

As a TD, Mr Roche was paid a salary of €98,164.32 in 2008, and did not claim any travel or subsistence expenses from the Oireachtas. Mr Roche’s expenses claims at the Department of Foreign Affairs have continued into 2010, with the most recent single claim for €1,050.59 made for mileage costs on February 19, 2010. A Junior Minister could expect to earn €147,284 a year in 2007, on top of their average TD salary of €122,000.

Expenses data for all staff at the Department of Foreign Affairs for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 will be published here in the coming weeks.

Updated:

In 2007 it emerged that many junior ministers were claiming large amounts of mileage:

THE current system of paying junior ministers’ mileage has been described as a “farce” after it emerged a TD in Dublin claimed 100 times more in petrol expenses than a TD in Galway.

Figures seen by the Irish Independent show that Noel Ahern, who represents Dublin North West, ran up mileage expenses of €19,710 last year and €20,390 to date this year.

This is 100 times more than the €190 which was claimed last year by Noel Treacy, who represents the people of Galway East.

But last night, Mr Ahern claimed the figures supplied by the department about Mr Treacy were “ridiculous” and “wrong”. He said he is usually at the lower end of claims when a full list is compiled adding: “I don’t think that (€19,710) is necessarily that much.”

Figures show the Department of the Environment — which is headed up by the Green’s John Gormley — has covered the most road miles.

The biggest claim last year was lodged by Cork’s Minister of State for Environment, Batt O’Keeffe — who ran up a travel bill of €62,638 and has already run up expenses of €32,240 so far this year.

Junior ministers were allowed to claim expenses following a Government decision in 1983 barred ministers of State from using a state car. Junior ministers do receive a civilian driver — but in a bid to cut costs, the Government allowed them to claim travel costs on up to 60,000 miles.

As long as ministers can prove that they used their car for official State business they are covered — and can claim travel allowance like any public servant on official business.

Department of Foreign Affairs expenses data

Some time ago I sought from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA):

1) A datadump (or copy) of the entire Sun database insofar as such data relates to claimed expenses.

The Department has released the data in question. Unfortunately it was released in PDF format (3,000+ pages), so it will take a little extra time to import into spreadsheets. The release contains three tranches, expenses of DFA staff (2005 to 2010), Irish Aid expense claims (2005 to 2010), and Honorary Consul expense claims. I will be publishing this data over the coming weeks.

For now here are the Honorary Consul claims, which are relatively minor. I again wish to emphasise that publishing this data is not an attempt to embarrass any one person, nor does it form the basis of any claim that somehow there was something unjustified about any expense claimed by civil servants. It is merely an attempt to publish large public datasets as an exercise in transparency.

Other database requests are also pending, or subject to appeals.

Honorary Consul expenses 2005 to 2010

The data is subject to correction (albeit minor) because of the OCR processes I have to run on PDFs. However these will be checked once they are complete.

Seanad salary and expenses 2005 to 2008

Following on from the publication of spreadsheets containing the salaries and expenses of TDs for the 2005, 2006, 2007 to 2008, we have now put together the same for the Seanad. For the period 2005 to 2008, the Oireachtas paid out €27,177,074.19 to Senators in salaries and expenses. Here are the top 20:

Paddy Burke € 642,281.37 (Leas Chathaoirleach 2002 to present)
Pat Moylan € 545,678.73 (Cathaoirleach 2007 to present)
Terry Leyden € 523,282.73 (Address listed as Leinster House, from Roscommon)
Geraldine Feeney € 504,558.08 (Sligo)
Camillus Glynn € 502,320.99 (Westmeath)
Maurice Cummins € 501,932.80 (Waterford)
Peter Callanan € 499,885.39 (Deceased, Cork)
Michael McCarthy € 498,351.77 (Cork)
Jim Walsh € 495,986.50 (Wexford)
Paul Bradford € 494,638.65 (Cork)
Francis O’Brien € 481,749.97 (Monaghan)
Rory Kiely € 478,552.18 (Cathaoirleach of the Seanad 2002 to 2007)
Labhras O Murchu € 478,009.16 (Tipperary)
Kieran Phelan € 474,963.74 (Deceased, Laois)
Diarmuid Wilson € 473,503.87 (Cavan)
Marc MacSharry € 472,206.44 (Sligo)
John Hanafin € 469,543.68 (Tipperary)
John Paul Phelan € 442,869.87 (Kilkenny)
Joe O’Toole € 433,713.64 (Dublin)
Ann Ormonde € 427,125.03 (Dublin)

The bottom 20 were:

Dan Boyle € 167,345.79
Pearse Doherty € 165,081.70
Larry Butler € 163,652.26
Mark Daly € 160,073.02
Frances Fitzgerald € 158,008.48
Alan Kelly € 157,395.10
Dominic Hannigan € 155,628.24
Lisa McDonald € 153,411.96
Ciaran Cannon € 143,535.51
Martin Brady € 142,440.28
Paul CoghIan € 136,794.64
Paschal Donohoe € 134,109.64
Eoghan Harris € 130,529.61
Maria Corrigan € 129,868.17
Deirdre De Burca € 125,795.49
Ivana Bacik € 125,338.78
Ronan Mullen € 125,278.90
Alex White € 125,107.31
Eugene Regan € 125,053.96
Fiona O Malley € 123,798.70

Full pivot table here: Senator totals 2005 to 2008

Again it is worth noting that the period 2005 to 2008 includes an election in 2007, so not all Senators would have been in their seats for the entire period. It is also again worth noting that the Cathlaoirleach and Leas Chathlaoirleach earn higher amounts due to their positions (allowances received due to position). And again we must emphasise: these amounts only cover salary and expenses, they do not cover costs incurred by Members, for such things as inter-parliamentary association travel.

Here are the total spreadsheets broken down by year:

Senate 2005 (xls)

Senate 2006 (xls)

Senate 2007 (xls)

Senate 2008 (xls)

TD expenses 2005 to 2008

We were pleased to see the announcement from the Oireachtas that from yesterday, expense claims of the Members will be published on a monthly basis. It’s a step in the right direction, and important for greater public scrutiny of the administration of the State.

Unfortunately the information is published in PDFs and contain little contextual information. Open formats and more data would have been better.

For our own part, we have been seeking for the past eight months all historical data on the expense claims of Members, from 1998 to 2009. We have made some progress. In tandem with the Oireachtas releasing its figures, we are provisionally publishing the spreadsheets of all expenses and salaries for members for the period 2005 to 2008. It is however important to point out that expenses do not cover the full cost of Members to the public purse – travel costs for example are largely paid by the Oireachtas itself and are not part of the expenses regime. We believe these costs should also be published, and probably combined with expense claims, so we have a full picture. (These figures exclude Ministerial salaries and expenses)

Some figures:

From 2005 to 2008, €97,637,195.65 was paid out to TDs in salaries and expenses.

The top 30 for the period are (a proviso: the Ceann Comhairle and his deputy receive Ministerial-like salaries, and heads of Committees receive greater amounts)

Rory O’Hanlon € 789,543.77
Michael Moynihan € 726,873.65
Bernard Allen € 725,636.56
Noel O’Flynn € 723,782.51
Sean Fleming € 722,561.57
Johnny Brady € 720,676.88
Jackie Healy-Rae € 719,350.52
Dan Neville € 712,660.55
Brendan Howlin € 709,654.03
John Cregan € 704,570.69
Padraic McCormack € 699,120.51
Ned O’Keeffe € 695,606.45
Dinny McGinley € 692,391.64
Seymour Crawford € 692,011.42
John Perry € 691,415.49
Michael Lowry € 690,947.20
Tom Hayes € 690,436.23
Peter Kelly € 684,358.22
Paul Kehoe € 680,046.39
Michael Ring € 679,042.87
Enda Kenny € 676,745.95
John O’Donoghue € 675,828.78
Phil Hogan € 672,263.48
Niall Blaney € 671,759.13
Pat Breen € 669,201.01
Jim O’Keeffe € 668,538.10
Michael Finneran € 665,965.04
John Moloney € 663,295.21
Beverley Flynn € 661,031.29
John Deasy € 659,961.01

Here is a full breakdown by member

Below is the full representation by year, including committee membership and all other expense headings. Some curious figures arise. For example:

In 2007 the biggest overall recipient of salary plus expenses was Deputy Michael Lowry. He received €194,643.02 and did not head any committees. This was the highest of any Member in the Dail, including the Ceann Comhairle (John O’Donoghue at the time) who received a Ministerial style salary (earning €189,120.56, or about €5,000 less than Mr Lowry). The main reason I can see as to why Mr Lowry stands out is his travel expenses: €70,169.08 in one year, the highest of any member, and a good €15,000 more than the next highest recipient (Michael Ring).

I am sure there are lots of other curious stats in the spreadsheets, have a look. You might see slight misspelling of names (thanks to OCR processes), but all of the figures have been triple checked against records released under the FOI Act.

2008 TD (xls)

2007 TD (xls)

2006 TD (xls)

2005 TD (xls)

I will shortly publish the same set of figures for the Seanad.