Ex-CEO paid €200k lump sum from charity

A lump sum amounting to €200,000 was paid out of charitable donations to the former chief executive of the Central Remedial Clinic who retired in June.

Acting chairman Jim Nugent confirmed the payment to Paul Kiely was made using the clinic’s charitable arm, Friends and Supporters of the CRC, which collected a total of €2m last year.

Mr Kiely will also be entitled to a pension of around €98,000 in three years.

He was quizzed during a meeting of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee on his top-up payments amounting to more than €116,000, over and above his €106,000 HSE salary.

Asked by Fine Gael TD John Deasy if he had qualms about claiming a top-up payment from money made through public donations, Mr Keily said: “I have qualms about everything to do with this, absolutely everything to do with it.”

The HSE said it had “no knowledge” of the fact the lump sum was coming from the charity fund, and didn’t have “any influence or decision making” over it because Mr Kiely was not part of the public-service pension scheme.

Mr Deasy said people who had made donations would “not feel good about the fund being used for that purpose, and that amount of money”.

He said people concerned about the issue “have to look at the HSE and the people policing this as well”. He said there had been calls for CRC directors to resign, but “the people policing this, just because they work in government, they shouldn’t be immune from that kind of sanction as well as the people involved in the boards”.

It also emerged that an average of €1 in every €6 donated to the charity in recent years has gone towards top-ups to Mr Kiely and four other staff members at the disability service provider.

A total of €271,057 was paid to five staff members in recent years to supplement their taxpayer-funded pay from the HSE out of a yearly average of €1.5m donated to its charity arm.

Top-up payments of €32,537 each were made to four senior staff in the CRC, working in client services, administration, HR, and IT, on top of their HSE salaries of €79,000.

Sinn Féin TD Mary Lou McDonald said the payments made up a “very substantial portion of money raised through the generosity of the public”.

Fine Gael TD Áine Collins asked if the committee could be provided with CVs of all those in receipt of top-ups.

Mr Nugent said that would be in breach of data protection laws and would require the consent of staff members involved.

Mr Kiely stepped down from the board of the clinic on Nov 25.