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

Oireachtas expenses 1998 – 2008

On August 30 I sought information on all TD and Senate expense from 1998 to 2008. On September 14 I blogged about this effort, and again on September 16.

As of now the situation is this: the Oireachtas is due to release all expenses data from January 1, 2003 to December 31, 2008, for all TDs and Senators. However, we desire a complete record of all expenses claimed. To that end, we submitted an FOI request for all expenses data for 2002 and 2001, with a view to eventually seeking 2000 and 1999/1998. This would include complete calendar years, rather than simply previously released FOI data, which does not cover the entirety of the years in question.

Today we were informed that under Section 10 (1) (c) of the Act, the deciding officer believes that “granting the request would by reason of such number of records or an examination of such kind of records concerned as to cause substantial and unreasonable interference with or disruption of work of the public body concerned”.

However they have said they would release previously released FOI data.

We are mulling this one over.

Comment policy

Following some recent comments we now have to implement a new comments policy. This will mean that all comments are held in moderation before they are published. One user in particular has argued that leaving comments on whatever post he likes about whatever subject he likes is his right as a human being, in order for him to tell “the truth”. Unfortunately, one man’s truth is another man’s lawsuit. Comments are entirely at our discretion.

Neither do we tolerate trolling or worse, sock puppetry. Which is especially strange when the same user has been complimenting himself on his own sense of humour via other names, but under the same IP address. I would suggest that he start his own blog, given this fact.

Dan Drezner school of commenting:

1) Every e-mail sent about the blog and every comment posted on the blog is read.

2) We won’t necessarily reply to every e-mail message or respond to every posted query.

3) We’re truly sorry for the non-responses.

4) Unless otherwise indicated, we will not attribute any quote from any email on the blog.

5) When it comes to the comments feature, remember that we control the horizontal and the vertical. Moderation is in operation because of previous abuse of the feature. We will delete comments that we think are personally insulting, completely off-topic from the post, or so incoherent as to pass all understanding. Our space, our rules.

6) When you’re posting your comments, bear in mind that people are watching. Libel rules apply.

… get up them stairs, Johnny

[Thanks to IrishElection for the clip of Junket Johnny O’Donoghue speaking today before his resignation. I’m going to assume he didn’t need a limo to get from the chair to the backbenches.]

His speech reeked of a sense of entitlement that appears to have polluted parliament to a massive degree. The anecdotal evidence that Fine Gaelers are amongst the deputies giving Labour TDs the cold shoulder following Eamon Gilmore’s intervention last week speaks volumes. I suspect this abuse of the expenses system is not solely a Fianna Fáil problem, they just happen to have been in Government the last eleven years. Continue reading “… get up them stairs, Johnny”