SIPTU to publish report on controversial €4.5m fund this month

SIPTU wants to publish a report within the next three weeks on the controversial SIPTU National Health and Local Authority Levy Fund into which the state and private sources placed almost €4.5 million between 2001-2010, but which the union has repeatedly insisted it knew nothing about.

Issues with the account — the signatories to which were SIPTU official Matt Merrigan and union member Jack Kelly — first became public at the start of the summer as part of an investigation into the HSE’s SKILL training fund.

A considerable part of the €4.48m lodged in the health and local authority levy fund had come from SKILL, and the HSE probe found serious breaches in the way the training fund was governed, as well as a lack of receipts for much of the money paid out.