State to publish probe into financial and governance issues at Inland Fisheries Ireland

The C&AG’s investigation stemmed from a number of disclosures which the agency and the Department of the Environment received in 2022 and 2023, which 'raised concerns around IFI’s governance arrangements and the adequacy of its system of internal control'. Picture: Inland Fisheries Ireland.

The State's accountant will shortly publish an investigation into the financial governance issues at Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI), which saw the body’s entire board stood down in early 2023.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) said its examination of those issues at IFI — the body with responsibility for preserving Ireland’s inland waterways — “in greater detail” was presented to environment minister Darragh O’Brien on July 25.

The minister is required to present the report before the Dáil within three months of receiving it, setting the publication date for late October 2025.

Typically, the C&AG publishes its annual audits of Government agencies, together with investigations of other matters of concern, on or around September 30 each year.

The C&AG’s investigation stemmed from a number of disclosures which the agency and the Department of the Environment received in 2022 and 2023, which “raised concerns around IFI’s governance arrangements and the adequacy of its system of internal control”, it said.

It added audits of IFI’s financial statements in 2021 and 2022 had raised “significant issues of concern around governance, internal control issues, the regularity of transactions and value-for-money issues”.

“This examination reviews those matters in more detail,” a spokesperson said. 

Some of those issues include the rental of historical Aasleagh Lodge in Mayo to a junior IFI employee without the knowledge of the board, and the relocation of chief executive Francis O’Donnell to Donegal from Dublin without board sanction.

IFI’s entire board was dissolved by then environment minister Eamon Ryan on the back of several board resignations relating to the body’s governance issues, which had left the organisation unable to operate at board level due to a lack of numbers.

It emerged at the Public Accounts Committee in April 2024 that IFI had spent more than €170,000 in prosecuting 61 incidents of pollution, some resulting in significant fish kills — with the majority of those cases eventually withdrawn due to “technical issues”.