By: Michael O’Farrell

Investigations Editor

TWO county managers, a Fianna Fáil councillor, a senior official and a FÁS executive used a State-funded enterprise centre to pay for years of spectacular foreign junkets for themselves, their wives and their children.

The five – all board members of a charity called Wicklow Enterprise Park – took wives, sons or daughters on trips that included visits to the Kennedy Space Centre, Universal Studios and Disney World. There were at two such trips to Florida and one to California, during which dinners in top restaurants costing hundreds of dollars were commonplace.

Other WEP board members also went on the junkets but travelled alone. Other trips included visits to Germany and a two-night stay in Killarney that cost €17,000.

During one Florida trip, the WEP party made news for all the wrong reasons, as an undercover team from a local TV station filmed a lavish dinner that local politicians threw for their Irish guests – at the expense of Florida’s taxpayers.

US junkets costing between €22,000 and €26,000 each took place in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

On each occasion, the party was led by WEP chairman Blaise Treacy (pictured above) – who resigned as Wicklow county manager in 1999, the year he was revealed to have claimed more expenses than any other county manager.

Mr Treacy – who remains on the WEP board – frequently took his wife with him and in 2005 also took his daughter to Florida. Other current and former WEP directors who took wives and/or children on at least one of the charity’s US trips include current county manager Eddie Sheehy, county enterprise officer Tony O’Neill and FAS official Iggy Fields.

Another director, Fianna Fáil ex-councillor Michael Lawlor, took only his wife. WEP was set up in 1995 as a limited company with charitable status. It pays zero tax and has more than €5m cash reserves. It has claimed millions in grants from State bodies including Pobal, FAS, Wicklow County Enterprise Board and Enterprise Ireland.

In 2011, Pobal launched an audit of WEP and has now asked the Comptroller & Auditor General to investigate.

One Junket Made TV News In Florida

But the US politicians’ spending was put to shame by the guests from Ireland whose Jetset lifestyle involved lavish dinner bills, spas, rounds of golf, theme parks and even parking fines

By: Michael O’Farrell

ON THE morning of Friday, November 4, 2007, Blaise Treacy switched on the TV in room 634 of the Lake Mary Marriott Hotel in Orlando. The morning news on WFTV’s Channel 9 made him sit up abruptly. ‘Taxpayers Foot Bill For Expensive Meal’ ran the headline, beamed out across Florida.

And there, centre screen, was Blaise himself, together with an assortment of his colleagues from the Wicklow Enterprise Park.

Filmed by an undercover team at an exclusive restaurant, the Irish delegation had been caught in a TV sting, set up to expose the extravagance of the county commissioners of Seminole County.

The commissioners, the US equivalent of county councillors, were entertaining their friends from Wicklow – and WFTV milked every moment of the secret footage.

‘Four out of five commissioners shmoozed with five county staffers and a delegation of a dozen people from Ireland,’ said the report, telling viewers that Seminole had been twinned with Wicklow for 11 years.

‘It’s a relationship that hasn’t had much of a pay-off for anyone other than the commissioners,’ the newscast noted, putting the cost of visits by commission staff to Wicklow at $40,000 over the years.

But as they watched and fumed over their local politicians enjoying ‘grilled salmon over artichoke hearts and veal milanese drizzled with balsamic reduction’, no one in Florida could have guessed that the Irish delegation were in the process of clocking up a decade-long travel spree costing over €300,000 that makes their American counterparts’ junketeering look shabby. The day after that dinner, the Irish group – which included wives and children – enjoyed an adventure boat ride on nearby Lake Jesup at a cost of €214 before consuming a €954 dinner.

That Friday, they hit Universal Studios – at a cost of over €500. And before flying home they squeezed in a day at Disney World and a day at the Kennedy Space Centre.

All this was at the expense of a State-funded agency with tax-free charity status – Wicklow Enterprise Park Ltd – set up in 1995 to run Wicklow town’s enterprise centre.

Since then, WEP, with Mr Treacy as chairman, has racked up that €300,000 travel bill – the majority, €159,627, spent in a four-year period beginning in 2005 that included two trips to Florida, one to California and one to Würzburg in Germany.

Central to many of those trips was a core of five WEP directors who also took their wives and, in some cases, their children. They were: ? Mr Treacy, a retired Wicklow county manager, who took his wife and daughter; ? Eddie Sheehy, current Wicklow county manager, who took his wife on one trip and his son on another; ? Tony O’Neill, the council’s then enterprise officer, who took his partner and her daughter; ? Iggy Fields, a now-retired FÁS community services area manager, who took his wife and son; and ? Michael Lawlor, a former Fianna Fáil councillor who took his wife. Last night, Mr Fields said he had resigned from WEP in 2010 over concerns ‘about how some significant contracts had been negotiated and finalised and the extent to which the board had, in my view, not been kept properly informed.

‘However, I am still bound by board confidentiality and I will not descend to defensive, selective leaking of confidential material in defence of my position. I would welcome an official enquiry with which I will cooperate fully,’ he said.

He isn’t the only person feeling the pressure at WEP: former manager Martina Robinson has lodged a case at the Labour Relations Commission alleging bullying, and two more board members – Denis Fielding and Mervyn Morrison – have resigned. In his resignation letter, obtained by the MoS, Mr Morrison cites ‘difficulties with… overseas trips which were arranged without consultation with many of the board members’.

Several trips – including those to the US – were attended by Ms Robinson and her husband. But in a statement last night, she said: ‘I would like to state for the record that as part of my duties as manager of the WEP, I was instructed to attend these trips and I can confirm I discharged the costs associated with my husband, Pat Fox, in full.’ Concerns about levels of expendi-ture on travel by WEP directors led Pobal, a charity that manages Government funding of social projects, to launch an audit of the €284,000 in grants it had provided in 2006 and 2007.

A July 2011 letter to Mr Treacy from Pobal CEO Denis Leamy, seen by the MOS, pointed out that WEP was retaining assets of more than €5.4m.

Mr Leamy said Pobal believed ‘a comprehensive, in-depth review was required of all public funding accessed by the company.’ He advised WEP that he had written to the Department of Social Protection ‘and requested that this matter be brought to the attention of other accounting officers and the C&AG’.

Pobal’s letter to the department, also obtained by the MoS, specifically addressed concerns about allegations regarding ‘foreign travel by WEP staff and board members, with their families, at the company’s expense’.

In a lengthy statement last night, Mr Treacy said WEP was ‘the most successful Community Enterprise Centre in the country and has won numerous awards for Enterprise Development nationally’. He said all WEP visits to the USA and Germany were to ‘promote enterprise in Wicklow’ and that the board had deemed appropriate the attendance of spouses.

‘WEP is run by a voluntary board that draws no salary, stipend or any other benefit for their work (excepting out-of-pocket expenses). Board members act solely in a pro-bono capacity for the good of the wider Wicklow community,’ he said.

‘The board is satisfied that all study visits represented excellent value for money and have contributed to the management and longterm strategic development of the organisation.’ Mr Treacy said WEP had ‘always acted in compliance with the Companies Acts and in accordance with corporate governance best practice.

‘All grant monies received from funding organisations (including Pobal) were spent in their entirety on projects/activities included in the grant applications submitted to and approved in advance by those organisations.

‘All expenditure of grant monies was fully vouched to the satisfaction of the funding organisations and, in the case of Pobal funding, to the satisfaction of auditors appointed by Pobal.’ The statement did not make any reference to children and did not address any of the visits to tourist attractions.