Call for ex-Rehab chiefs to ‘explain themselves’

There will be “no moving on” from the crisis engulfing the charity sector unless two former bosses of Rehab come forward and “explain themselves”, according to the chairman of the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) John McGuinness.

Angela Kerins, who retired as chief executive of the charity last week, and her predecessor, Frank Flannery, both have “substantial questions to answer” he said after their failure to attend yesterday’s meeting as part of the committee’s examination into spending at the disability charity.

In six hours of hearings, Rehab’s director of finance, Keith Poole, accepted that Ms Kerins’ pay package, which amounted to €272,4000, was paid for from state funding.

She has previously insisted that her salary is funded entirely from the company’s commercial interests. But Mr McGuinness said the “myth” that payments come from a commercial entity, making money, “just doesn’t stand up”.

He said: “It’s not a commercial entity, it relies heavily on the taxpayer and without that support it would not exist.”

It was revealed during the committee that, of the €118m of funding for the charity from within Ireland, €95.5m comes from the State and €13.5m comes from charitable donations.

This means that it is “practically a semi-state company” because 92% of its income in Ireland comes from taxes or public donations, committee member, Seán Fleming, (FF) said.

Mr McGuinness told the four directors of the charity who appeared before the meeting to make a “direct intervention” to make the former CEOs appear and in doing so to reflect on the “substantial funding coming from the State and the general public”.

The committee will once again appeal to the former executives and if they refuse, can consider using legal powers to compel them.

Ahead of yesterday’s meeting, Ms Kerins sent a letter to the Rehab board warning that they were “prohibited” from revealing details of her retirement package.

The committee also heard Mr Flannery received €409,000 for lobbying and consultancy work since retiring as CEO in 2006 — almost all of which was signed off by Angela Kerins and not the group’s finance director.