Revenue to examine accounts of scandal-hit charity

Revenue officials are to begin an emergency examination of suicide prevention charity Console’s accounts within days, the Irish Examiner has learned.

The Office of the Revenue Commissioners is understood to have written to Console in the last 24 hours to demand the right to trawl through all financial records since 2009 amid growing concern at the scale of “irregularities” at the charity.

In two separate letters to Console, which is engulfed in a scandal due to revelations that former chief executive Paul Kelly was misspending funds on cars, foreign holidays, designer clothes, and rugby match tickets, Revenue officials said they want full access to all files over the past seven years.