Minister accountable for Flannery
Surely, these calls should have been directed at the Department of Environment, Community and Local Government, because taxpayers’ money paid for the €60,000-per-annum, 18-month contract which Mr Flannery secured from the Forum. According to its audited accounts for 2012, the Department provided €631,635 to Philanthropy Ireland — 79% of the lobby group’s income that year.
In the Central Government sector, proposals to procure supplies or services above a certain threshold (€25,000) without a competitive process must be subject to an independent internal review and annual reporting to the C&AG and the Government Contracts Committee.
What procurement and oversight procedures did the Department prescribe with respect to Mr Flannery’s consulting contract? The Minister established the Forum to increase philanthropic donations in Ireland from €500m per annum, in 2011, to €800m per annum by 2016, at a cost to taxpayers, over four years, of €2.5m.
If the Forum has delivered on its mandate, fundraising in 2013 will have comfortably passed the €600m threshold last year. Can the Department confirm if this has been achieved and what benchmarks are used by the Department? Public concern with charities revolves around accountability, credibility and transparency and a chairman’s abrupt resignation does not fulfil any of these criteria.
A Fine Gael minister appointed Mr Flannery, a Fine Gael insider, with intimate, unrivalled and unencumbered access to influence the Government, to the Forum. Accountability, for Mr Flannery’s remunerated services, rests with those who are accountable for the public money that pays for them and the Minister who appointed him, not merely with the service provider who has resigned from office.
Myles Duffy
Glenageary
Co Dublin
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