High Court action over €691 claim settled

A costly legal wrangle that erupted because Wexford County VEC queried a €691 expenses claim has been settled in the High Court.

Tens of thousands of euro were spent in legal, inquiry, and investigation fees while WCVEC dealt with the fallout from its move to discipline Tom Cullen, its former education officer, over his minor expenses claim in 2007.

The legal bills were all incurred before the Irish Public Bodies insurance company, on behalf of WCVEC, settled the High Court action with Mr Cullen last week.

The undisclosed settlement included provision for Mr Cullen’s costs. He said it was confidential but “substantial”.

The settlement ended one part of a protracted and expensive affair at WCVEC. Spin-offs from the initial expenses’ query have involved inquiries by gardaí; the education minister; the Comptroller and Auditor General; the audit unit for the VEC sector; as well as a separate review by Mason Hayes and Curran solicitors, and questions at the Public Accounts Committee.

Since 2007, the VEC has declared legal bills of €205,393, of which €122,894 was spent on human resources advice, investigations of employee conduct, and appeals.

The cost of the High Court settlement will not be included in this total for legal costs because the bill was borne by the IPB.

None of the spin-off inquiries were instigated because of anything Mr Cullen had done. They developed afterwards out of the acrimony and expense that ensued from WCVEC’s attempt to discipline him.

In 2007, Mr Cullen claimed €691 — the price of a course he took at the University of Ulster.

His employer challenged him because it said the expense had not been authorised by his supervisor — WCVEC chief executive Clare McMahon.

At an initial inquiry in Oct 2007, a three-person committee of the WCVEC said “from where we were standing it looked like [the claim] could be fraud and would need to be investigated further”.

Subsequently, the issue was raised at a VEC meeting and led to one of its members, Cllr Padge Reck, making a detailed complaint to the education minister.

This alleged governance failings, human resources issues and bad money management. He also claimed Mr Cullen had been the victim of double standards.

Mr Reck based his claim on a file of anonymously supplied expenses details which related to other employees of WCVEC.

These showed that Mr Cullen’s expense request was not the only one that had been signed off by the claimant themselves.

After Mr Reck sent his complaint to then education minister Batt O’Keeffe, he was questioned by gardaí about the source of the leak and the potential theft of documents.

The Comptroller and Auditor General is expected to refer to the matter in the 2010 accounts for WCVEC, which he audited earlier this year.