Inland Fisheries Ireland paid €145k to former chief executive after his dismissal, Dáil committee hears

Former chief executive Francis O’Donnell is now taking an unfair dismissal case at the Workplace Relations Commission

The Public Accounts Committee heard former chief executive Francis O’Donnell, pictured, received total payments from IFI of €377,000 for 2024 and 2025, despite being on leave from the organisation from March 2024.

Beleaguered State agency Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) paid off the salary of its former chief executive, who is now taking a case at the Workplace Relations Commission, at a cost of €145,000, an Oireachtas committee has heard.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard former chief executive Francis O’Donnell received total payments from IFI of €377,000 for 2024 and 2025, despite being on leave from the organisation from March 2024.

Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy said Mr O’Donnell received €55,000 in salary payments for 2024, €77,000 for January to June of 2025, and the additional €145,000 instead of the remainder of his contract until November of last year.

Mr O’Donnell was terminated from Inland Fisheries Ireland in June 2025. He has since taken an unfair dismissal case against the organisation to the WRC, where he has alleged he was blackmailed by a sitting senator in a bid to have him reinstate a senior official at IFI whom he had suspended.

IFI has been without a full-time chief executive for the past two years, although a new chief executive, Dr Eamonn Kelly, is due to take up his appointment later this month.

Mr McCarthy further told the committee a second WRC case was now outstanding, taken by the driver of an IFI vehicle involved in a road accident in 2021, with that vehicle subsequently found to have been uninsured.

He noted the accident cost the organisation €205,000 in legal and repair fees.

He added a further legal fees of €277,000 to date had been incurred by IFI as a result of a series of failed prosecutions it had taken, with those cases withdrawn when it emerged they had been incorrectly delegated to IFI officials.

He added further that IFI had incurred expenditure of €717,000 in 2024 relating to non-compliant procurement, that is expenditure on services conducted without a public tender process.

Mr McCarthy said it was “regrettable to have to continue to report in this way” but said it was necessary to do so in order to ensure IFI “bottoms out these governance and control issues, and takes the necessary steps to avoid any re-occurrence".

Regarding the paying-off of the former chief executive's contract, IFI officials present at the PAC hearing acknowledged those payments had been above and beyond what was legally required under Mr O’Donnell’s contract, but said the legal advice they had received had been to pay all of his entitlements.

IFI chair Professor Tom Collins, said the agency’s parent body, the Department of the Environment, had been kept informed of IFI’s intention to pay off Mr O’Donnell’s salary, and had approved it.

He added the body had elected to enter mediation with Mr O’Donnell rather than taking legal action in order to “avoid exposure” to additional costs.

When it was put to him by Sinn Féin’s Joanna Byrne she had no confidence IFI was in a position to rectify the governance issues it has been battling for most of the past five years, Mr Collins said none of the issues being discussed, bar procurement, were current. However, he acknowledged “the burden of proof is on us” to show the agency had improved its situation.