More interesting searches

Like Mark explained last week, we are closely watching the search strings and IP addresses of visitors. Today another one popped up. On Friday I submitted an FOI request to the Comptroller & Auditor General, located at the Treasury Building in Dublin. They would have received my request today.

And today this search:

Search Engine Phrase “gavin sheridan”
Search Engine Name Google
Search Engine Host www.google.ie
Host Name h137-191-239-45.gn.gov.ie
IP Address 137.191.239.45 [Label IP Address]
Country Ireland
Region Dublin
City Dublin
ISP Treasury Bldg
Returning Visits 0
Visit Length 2 mins 59 secs
VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
Browser IE 7.0
Operating System WinXP
Resolution 1024×768
Javascript Enabled

It is certainly interesting. I would imagine it is curiosity, or perhaps even a desire to know the purpose of my request. However, it is also worth noting Section 8 (4) of the Freedom of Information Act:

Subject to the provisions of this Act, in deciding In deciding whether to grant or refuse to grant a request under section 7:
(a) any reason that the requester gives for the request, and
(b) any belief or opinion of the head as to what are the reasons of the requester for
the request,

shall be disregarded.

Searching for who I am after my request has been submitted is a curious one. Legally, the reasons for my request are irrelevant to the Deciding officer or the FOI officer.

EU public procurement contracts – Ireland

While I was at Personal Democracy Forum Europe in Barcelona last week, I got talking to someone who had a copy of all EU public procurement contracts for the last several years (70Gb of data). I asked for a copy of all data relating to Ireland, and I have now uploaded a zipped copy of this information for the crowd to use. The data is stored in xml format, and as my programming skills are non-existent, I thought this one might be better given to anyone out there who wants to play with it, and made into a more usable format.

Have fun.

EU public procurement contracts – Ireland (10Mb zipped file)

Bankers appear before finance committee… this time

There’s a most interesting and pertinent piece of political writing in today’s Irish Times by Miriam Lord. She watched high-ranking bankers appear before the Oireachtas Finance Committee.

Eighteen months ago…

…when the same Oireachtas committee wanted to ask the same banks about the way they conducted their business, fewer chairmen and chief executives deigned to turn up. To add insult to injury, the bankers then proceeded to talk down to the worried politicians, assuring them their fundamentals were sound.

…Richie Boucher, before his big promotion, was present back in July of 2008. “Unequivocally,” he declared, “we do not believe there is a Northern Rock lurking in Ireland.”

His colleague, David Guinan, stated: “We pride ourselves on the fact that we have been and continue to be very prudent and responsible.” Donal Forde of the AIB offered the following gem: “In regard to lending standards in AIB, we have behaved very responsibly in recent years and we have maintained a very prudent credit stance.” (Correct. There was a whole shed load of them.)

The highlight of the committee meeting was supplied by Willie McAteer, then executive director of Anglo Irish Bank. “Clearly, the whole perception of Ireland and the negative sentiment towards it are obviously of concern to us. However, this sentiment is not borne out by the fundamentals.”

Here’s another rib-tickler from Willie: “I reject the suggestion that banks have been foolhardy in recklessly lending and driving up values . . . in my experience, the banks have been prudent.”

Yesterday…

The Bank of Ireland went so far as to say it wouldn’t have to go back to the Government next year for a further handout. Sheehy was similarly upbeat about AIB.

Do you believe them this time ’round?

Read Miriam Lord’s article in full on Irishtimes.com

Department of the Taoiseach staff diaries

More than four weeks ago I sought a variety of diaries from from the Department of the Taoiseach. I have now scanned, OCRd and uploaded the diaries of three staff members for the period May 5, 2008 to May 31, 2009.

The diary of appointments for Department Secretary General Dermot McCarthy from May 5, 2008 to May 31, 2009, inclusive.

The diary of appointments for Department Assistant Secretary Philip Hamell from May 5, 2008 to May 31, 2009, inclusive.

The diary of appointments for Department Assistant Secretary Philip Kelly from May 5, 2008 to May 31, 2009, inclusive.

One interesting bit: On November 24, Dermot McCarthy met Patrick Neary of the Financial Regulator and Pat Farrell, probably of the Irish Banking Federation. Another regular appearence in the diaries is that of CIF chief Tom Parlon, likely lobbying.

Brian Cowen’s diary

Part 2 of an ongoing process. Today I am posting the Taoiseach’s diary from October 2008 to March 2009.



Redactions are there because the Department says some relate to personal information, and others relate to party political issues.

The Baker Tilly Report into CIÉ/Iarnród Éireann

The Baker Tilly Report details questionable procurement practices, suspected fraud and collusion between employees and tendering companies within Iaranród Eireann, the sub-section of CIÉ which manages our rail network.

It covers the period between January 2004 and January 2008 and runs to more than 350 pages, making it the biggest official report I’ve read in quite a while. Although the directors of CIÉ received a copy in early 2008, shockingly, they didn’t think it proper to give the minister of transport a copy until the Sunday Independent got a few leaks about the contents in October of this year. It became available under FOI in the last two weeks. It should be noted that the minister is a shareholder in CIÉ, and the company got more than €300m in taxpayers money last year alone. Also worth noting, the department only requested a copy of the report after seeing the SIndo – otherwise this may never have become public knowledge.

Since collecting a copy from the department last week I’ve scanned and sent it in batches to Gavin. He OCR’d them and stitched them back together into a single PDF file which can be viewed at the link below, it gets interesting around page 260. As far as I am aware, this is the only digital copy in the public domain.

The findings are shocking. There was widespread “on-going non-compliance” with procurement procedures resulting in “fundamental system deficiency” in how private companies won contracts. EU procurement laws were ignored. Employees stole railway sleepers from stock, continuously over a long period, and sold them for their own profit – the methods (or lack thereof) used to monitor stock meant this went unnoticed. Companies were paid for work which doesn’t seem to have been done. Paperwork on a serious number of contracts was near non-existent. Explanations for discrepancies arising in stock records are not investigated to a satisfactory extent. Employees colluded with companies to ensure contracts were won. Staff weren’t trained in how to do their job, and one person who signed off on a contract for work which didn’t seem to get done had the contractor working on their private residence.

It’s Fás Mark II.

One figure for definable loss to the company is €2.6m, but this is low due the lack of paperwork available to quantify whether or not elements of contracts, or whole contracts, were losses or not. The Baker Tilly team even state  “we are confident that other unidentified loss exists within the organisation”. Shane Ross puts the figure at €9m.

The Spencer Dock/North Wall development project makes up €892,887 of the definable figure of which €363,540 was down to “known or suspected fraud”. In another area a loss of €271,665 was put down to collusion with contractors – specifically “fraudulent invoices paid over a number of years” at the specific request of an employee whose name has been redacted. The report says the employee has repaid €100,000 in compensation, though it doesn’t say whether or not they’re still an employee to this day.

Another person was employed as an inspector to monitor the work of various contractors (aka vendors), however…

…the work which was being described on the system was not actually being carried out. Surveillance showed that the contractors were doing little or no work when they should have been under the supervision of the inspector in question.

In one instance the vendor was seen to be carrying out work at the inspector’s private address.

It is likely that the company [IÉ] has suffered financial loss whether through value for money or actual fraud during the period examined for the said inspector. Invoices for the period examined total €30,602. It is also highly likely that further losses have been incurred as a result.

However, it’s goes beyond the above. The first 200 pages, though insanely boring and lacking figures, document a complete lack of oversight and  management within the organisation. There was no standard procurement paperwork, for example, meaning it is difficult to trace who was responsible for issuing contracts, what the contracts were for or even who was invited to compete for the work.

Also, service entry details were being based on “pro-forma invoices received after work had been completed rather than being based on an original request, prior to the work commencing”, which makes little sense. The “quality of supporting timesheets and work dockets” and the level of information included on these documents “varied between contractors” due to the poor paperwork system and insufficiently trained staff. This meant there is “little or no detail” about what exactly what was being paid for in some cases.

In short, it seems that at times money was paid to companies, but nobody can tell what was paid for – there was just an invoice.

The Baker Tilly team interviewed a large number of staff and had more fill in questionnaires about their work. They found “no manager or Senior Executive Buyer was aware of the existence of a Corporate Board Procurement Strategy for the Iarnród Éireann Organisation for Infrastructure Maintenance, Signal Electrical & Telecommunications (SE&T) & New Works” – the departments which procure most work. Furthermore, In three Iarnród Éireann divisions – Athlone, Dublin and Limerick – the Baker Tilly team found:

Detailed procedures followed at the Dublin, Limerick and Athlone Division in relation to the following areas for Infrastructure Maintenance and SE&T are not currently documented:

The request for plant hire/labour by the Permanent Way inspector SE&T Inspector;
The approval of the request and the selection of the contractor;
The valuation of the work for the selected contractor;
The input of the details into SAP [business management software] and the creation of a service entry form, where required; and
The receipt, review and approval of the contractor monies and the release of the service entry

The part of the report about the New Works section lists the procedures which are said to be gone through when labour or plant hire is required. The procedure goes something like;

Relevant managers meet and discuss what work will required for the next few weeks;

The co-ordinator then prepares a detailed spreadsheet to estimate the value of the plant hire and labour being requested;

This is then entered in the SAP system;

The co-ordinator emails the contractors with relevant details;

The work is completed and timesheets are signed by an Iaranrod Eireann representative;

The contractor submits invoices which are reviewed in detail and approved by the co-ordinator, two managers and an accountant

But the sentence after that is… “the above procedures followed by New-Works Construction Unit are not currently documented”. It was the same for other sections also. No paperwork.

In the SE&T section “there was no documented evidence presented [to show]… the actual work performed and invoiced is monitored in accordance with the scheme plans and the tender” and that “an estimate of the work to be performed is not calculated prior to the work being requested from the contractor”. How the hell is that possible?

The most unusual piece activity related to payment, supposedly for the removal of soil, to a company whose details are redacted. I’ll finish by quoting a few paragraphs… they’re worth reading.

As part of the Docklands Station Development Project, work was completed in the freight yard in preparation for the project commencement in 2006. As part of the preparation New Works prepared a tender package in July 2006 for the removal of hazardous and non hazardous soils which were accumulated during the course of construction.

REDACTED tendered for this contract to remove non Hazardous Soil in July 2006 but was unsuccessful and the contracts were awarded to REDACTED. However, invoices were received at a later date from REDACTED for the removal of non-hazardous soil from the area outlined above from January to July 2006. It is the contention of New Works that REDACTED were never tasked with, nor did they perform soil removal activities from the North Wall Freight Yard during the course of the project and they are disputing the full extent of the invoices.

The invoices were signed off by and were paid by accounts payable between January and July 2006 quantified at €257,681.60 gross. The invoices were not matched to any planned work or budget of costs for the project, prior to payment of the invoices. Further invoices were submitted by REDACTED in December 2006 however these were not paid by The Company. We understand that there are currently legal proceedings ongoing with the said company.

Blanket purchase orders are set up on the SAP system at the beginning of each year by the procurement department for general plant hire work in the Infrastructure Maintenance Department. The invoices that are the subject of review were charged against a blanket purchase order and then coded to a capital WBS code.

On review of the invoice insufficient detail was provided and no supporting documentation was available. This made it difficult to determine if the work was actually done, figures provided by REDACTED independent consultant engineers, indicated that the work detailed in the invoices could not have been done as the quantity of soil left over to be removed from site was minimal.

It stinks, and I don’t mean the soil.

FOOTNOTE: CIE isn’t covered by the FOI Act, this document was obtained from the Department of Transport. Therefore, a lot of the dirty details may never come out.

My ears are burning…

I’m expecting a number of FOI requests to come back this week, including one from Fás. Strictly speaking, the Fás one should have been sent from their office today, as it was submitted exactly four weeks ago… so it was interesting to note an upsurge in hits to this site from the Fás server this morning.

At 10.06 the first click-through from the Fás internal PHPBB forum landed on this site. Since then there have been approximately 75 more (it’s now 2.45pm) – nearly every second hit to this site today has been from the same thread on the internal Fás forum.

All the Fás click-throughs land on this website’s About page, which makes it more interesting.

As I am a conspiracy theorist journalist; this raises a number of questions…

  • why is there a link to this site from the Fás internal server?
  • Is it relevant to the FOI requests I’ve submitted?
  • What is being said?
  • If relevant to the FOI request, why does it matter who sent the request?
  • Who in Fás went looking for me online and found this website?
  • What does it matter what the work I’m doing for this site involves?
  • Does this effect whether or not the FOI is granted?

I wonder… it should be noted however that at the moment I can’t know if the thread is relevant to my FOI or not, I’m just making an educated guess as I’ve had no other involvment with Fás at any point.

Anyone with access to the thread [which can be found at this link, if you’ve access to the Fás server, http://intra.fasoffice.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=11270] could let me what’s happening, my number is kicking about

Or I could simply FOI the details of the thread and find out for myself in four weeks time.

Dear Fás: I’m watching you watching me? So, who are you?

Of course, I’m not one to miss an opportunity to use a Bros song in a blog post.

Taoiseach's diary May 7, 2008 to October 7, 2008

Some weeks ago I sought the diary of An Taoiseach Brian Cowen, and it has now been released with redactions. Anthony Cummins, the Principal Officer in charge of my request stated in relation to the entries:

a) Some of them contain personal information, as defined in Section 2 of the Act, and I consider that the exemption provided by Section 28 of the Act applies to them

b) Some of them relate to the Taoiseach’s private papers as a member of the Oireachtas. Section 46 of the Act states, inter alia, that the Act does not apply to records relating to any of the private papers of a member of the Oireachtas and as such I consider that the Act does not apply to these entries….

c) I consider that release of some of the entries could reasonably be expected to affect adversely the international affairs of the State or maters relating to Northern Ireland. I consider that these entries are exempt from release under Section 24 of the Act

d) Some of the entries relate to the deliberative process of a public body and I consider that they are exempt under Section 20 (1) of the Act. I do not consider that the public interest would, on balance, be better served by granting than by refusing to grant access to these entries.

I am uploading this in tranches as the Department chose to release this information in hard copy, and I am scanning a few months at a time. I will integrate the diaries at a later stage.

May 7 to October 7.

Hanafin and Lenihan diaries

As part of a prior FOI request, I asked for some diary information for the former minister for education, Mary Hanafin. This has now been OCRd and uploaded to Scribd. I believe the redactions relate to mobile telephone numbers.

Mary Hanafin’s diary January 1, 2006 to March 1, 2006.

I have also combined two diary documents for Finance Minister Brian Lenihan into one document, making life a little easier:

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan’s diary May 7, 2008 to March 31, 2009