Cianan Brennan: Senior Garda employee questions finances at Templemore

The PAC may be looking favourably on the 31-page dossier containing 23 in-depth questions on Templemore Garda College, writes Cianan Brennan

The internal audit report found that Garda staff assigned to administrate the Templemore college “had no training in or experience of administration” and had no expertise in knowledge of public purse management.

The most senior civilian employee of An Garda Siochana has delivered a detailed document to the Dáil's Public Accounts Committee to increase the accountability of an investigation into the finances of the Garda College in Templemore.

John Barrett has been the head of human resources with the gardaí since 2014. 

Before that, he has a wide-ranging CV covering the same field in multiple appointments across the private sector.

Mr Barrett is currently under extended suspension from his role with the gardaí, pending a court action he took against the Garda Commissioner seeking an injunction over his own attempted dismissal in relation to his testimony to the Disclosures Tribunal. The next hearing for that case is scheduled for October.

But his correspondence with PAC this week needs to be seen in the light of previous appearances he made before the committee regarding Templemore in 2015. His knowledge of the figures demand consideration at the very least.

PAC has decided to take a week to consider the 31-page dossier featuring 23 in-depth questions before deciding what to do with it, although the initial signs from the committee’s meeting on Tuesday are that the document will be treated favourably.

The investigation Mr Barrett has in his sights was instigated by GSOC, the Garda ombudsman commission, in 2017 following a Garda internal audit report into the college, covering the period 2009 to 2016, which concluded it could offer “no assurance that the internal management and control systems in place to manage the finances at the Garda College are adequate”.

The internal audit report found that Garda staff assigned to administrate the Templemore college “had no training in or experience of administration” and had no expertise in knowledge of public purse management.

The GSOC investigation meanwhile has now been running for more than four years.

“The length of time is a concern to me,” Sligo Fianna Fáil TD and PAC member Marc MacSharry told the committee on Tuesday. 

Mr MacSharry, along with the Social Democrats’ Catherine Murphy and Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster, was also a member of the previous PAC which dealt with the Templemore audit in the first place.

“These are legitimate questions and GSOC may already be aware of them,” he said. “From my experience when the PAC reports on something that’s the end of it. I’m concerned it’s been four years since we dealt with this matter.”

The last of Mr Barrett’s 23 questions deals with issues he feels should have been dealt with by GSOC as part of its investigation at a minimum.

“These are very detailed questions. GSOC may well come back to us to say ‘we won’t be answering them and we’ll be continuing with our work’. But the detail of these questions can usefully be put by the committee. If they are published as questions of the committee it might focus minds elsewhere to inject a bit of pace into a process that seems to have lacked it,” Mr MacSharry added.

The last of Mr Barrett’s 23 questions deals with issues he feels should have been dealt with by GSOC as part of its investigation at a minimum.

Those issues include: why all EU-sourced monies were not declared and accounted for in February 2017 when the Garda internal audit report was produced; how the 2010 balances in the various Garda bank accounts associated with the college relate to the commentary provided in the internal audit report; and what disciplinary matters have arisen for serving Garda members involved in what Mr Barrett describes as “this extensive conspiracy” involving “the mismanagement of EU funds”.

But the 22 other questions detail plenty of other questions of Mr Barrett’s own.

He describes nine investment accounts opened in the name of the college as of March 2010, with a value of €1.9 million as being “illegal” having been “opened and operated without permission from the Department of Finance”.

He requests a “complete tracing” of the Garda Bank of Ireland account, known as the ‘Restaurant Account’, which he said presented a possible “unexplained decrease” in balance of €237,442 between December 2006 and December 2007.

Drawing a comparison between the audited accounts for the college for 2007 and the internal audit report in 2017, Mr Barrett suggests the funds held as investments by the Garda college restaurant decreased in value by €958,548 between 2006 and 2014, a decline he suggests requires a “full explanation”.

He notes that per a 2010 report compiled by then Assistant Commissioner Jack Nolan, the college’s investments didn’t increase in value after 2006, yet its total cash assets at the end of 2007 stood at €725,000, a figure amounting to 525% of the recognised profit for the restaurant for that year.

And he suggests that the local St Raphael’s Garda Credit Union, which at the time provided “sponsorship” to the college GAA club of €40,000 pre-2008, in fact had sourced that sum from the Garda vote out of the Exchequer.

Mr Barrett’s dossier of questions appears to be designed to do two things: to bring the whole investigation into Templemore back into the PAC’s domain from where it has been absent since 2017, and to make sure that the GSOC investigation, at the very least, answers that specific set of questions thrown up by the gardaí’s own internal audit report.

Whether or not the PAC will buy into Mr Barrett’s way of thinking remains to be seen.