First published in the Irish Mail on Sunday on 24/06/2007
By: MICHAEL O’FARRELL
Investigative Correspondent
WHO KNOWS what was on the minds of Limerick’s city councillors as they filed into the council chamber on Monday, February 27, last year?
Perhaps some were concerned with a report from the economic policy committee. Others, no doubt, wanted to contribute to the debate on a report from the environmental strategic policy committee.
More still would have been looking forward to EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy addressing the meeting.
But many would also have been eagerly awaiting item No.10 on the agenda. Headed ‘Participation by members at conferences’, this section was where members would divvy up another round of events to attend over the coming weeks.
On this occasion, there were nine tempting outings to choose from, each involving a weekend away in a plush hotel at the taxpayers’ expense.
Examples included a two-day conference on local government in the Newpark Hotel in Kilkenny at a cost of almost E600 per councillor, and a three-day environmental colloquium at the Golf Hotel, Ballybunion, with a price tag of E800 per delegate.
Hundreds of such events take place each year, many aimed specifically at the lucrative councillor market.
Typically, costs range between E250 and E1,000 per head.
With hefty expenses and conference budgets in excess of E3,000 per person annually, the nation’s town and county councillors have created a burgeoning industry of their very own.
Indeed, many local authorities themselves cash in on the councillor tourist train by organising conferences to attract members from other towns and counties.
So, on the first Monday of each month, when local authorities meet, hundreds of elected representatives sign up for a junket or two.
With 1,627 directly elected local authority members nationwide, the scope for profitmaking is enormous.
Many events are worthy and relevant. But there is ample scope for any public representative so inclined to indulge in paid-up socialising at the expense of constituents.
‘I often wonder about them and there are times I can’t see any relevance whatsoever,’ said one Dublin councillor.
‘There is no point going to a conference on tomato growing in Kerry but it gets that obscure sometimes,’ said another.
At some monthly meetings, as many as 20 weekends away can be allocated, with several councillors being nominated to attend two or three conferences.
On February 5, for instance, Tipperary South County Council divvied up 31 conferences between 25 councillors.
So there was nothing unusual about that February meeting of Limerick City Council. But as representatives were about to conclude their deliberations, a new conference was proposed by Independent John Gilligan.
Entitled ‘The law of defamation as it affects councillors’, the conference was offered by a company called TJK Conferences Ltd.
The mayor, Diarmuid Scully, asked if any member had an interest in the conference.
Official minutes show that no councillor indicated an interest. Yet the conference was subsequently added to the approved list via a motion tabled by Mr Gilligan and seconded by another Independent, Gerry McLoughlin.
And there was someone at the meeting that day with a clear interest in the TJK conference.
Independent councillor Patrick Kennedy had been listed as a director of TJK since it was established by his son just over four weeks earlier. He is still actively involved in the organisation.
The minutes show that Mr Kennedy was present that day.
Mr Kennedy himself did not respond to questions from the Irish Mail on Sunday but a spokesman for the council said Mr Kennedy ‘was not in attendance at the time the matter was being discussed’.
The council confirmed that four councillors attended the TJK event at a cost to the taxpayer of E1,700. One of those paid by the council to attend was Mr Kennedy himself. Mr Kennedy did not respond to our enquiries on this subject despite repeated requests.
Mr Gilligan, who first suggested the TJK conference, said he did not know his colleague was a director of the company.
‘I hadn’t been asked by Pat Kennedy to bring it up but I can confirm I went to it. It was a particularly relevant conference. I got an invitation to it from the company and I found it particularly relevant,’ he said.
Others at the event in Tralee’s Earl Of Desmond Hotel said up to 100 delegates attended from councils around the country to hear presentations from, among others, Mr Kennedy himself.
Mr Kennedy, a practising barrister and ex- schoolteacher, recently found himself embroiled in controversy after he handed out business cards representing himself as a senator during an official council visit to Boston in March.
Mr Kennedy has not been a senator since 1982 but overshadowed fellow councillors and the mayor by being referred to as Senator Kennedy on US TV reports.
TJK was established only in January 2006 but another company has been providing similar services for years.
Kadenza Consultancies is run by Fianna F·il Clonmel Borough Councillor Niall Dennehy in association with Richard O’Donnell – a former county secretary for North Tipperary.
‘I declare everything in my statutory annual declaration and nobody is under any obligation to go to any of my seminars,’ said Mr Dennehy, adding that events run by Kadenza were intimate, with a maximum of 100 delegates paying up to E250 per seminar. With six training weekends scheduled each year, that’s a total of E150,000 in conference fees alone.
‘We try to provide councillors with relevant training – something we felt was not on offer out there,’ said Mr Dennehy.
But it is not difficult to find conferences that appear to be barely-disguised junkets. Nor is it hard to establish that many councillors regard such outings as personal holidays.
For the price of a one-page report and the time it takes to fill out an expenses claim, many public representatives routinely enjoy luxury weekends away where nothing more substantial than socialising takes place.
One long-serving councillor said 90pc of delegates went for the right reasons. But he said he knew colleagues who routinely attended Irishlanguage events even though they could speak no Irish.
‘That’s where we get the bad name from,’ he said. The MOS called 11 South Tipperary councillors who attended the Cumann Merriman winter school in Westport this January.
On its Irish-only website, the winter conference takes pride in the fact that it is exclusively Irish-speaking unlike a similar bilingual summer conference.
The organisers bill the event as a ‘convivial winter holiday’. Speaking in Irish, the MOS asked each one about his attendance. Of the 10 who answered, just one – Fianna F·il’s Tom Ambrose – was able to respond in Irish.
Mr Ambrose said the conference gave him the opportunity to speak his native language.
‘You have the opportunity to learn from everyone there and you can understand a lot from courses on the development of the language.’ Fianna F·il’s Michael Anglim hung up at first before finally saying: ‘Are you going to shut up or are you going to speak to me in a language I understand?
I don’t understand Irish.’ Asked to justify his attendance, Mr Anglim declined to comment and hung up again.
‘Could you run it by me in English?’ asked Fine Gael’s Michael Fitzgerald after hanging up the first call. ‘My interest was that I have a daughter who is studying to be a teacher so I brought back papers for her and I took notes.’ Labour’s Denis Landy said: ‘I’m not able to speak Irish.
Could you speak English?’ Mr Landy later said he had ‘some Irish’ but declined to comment when asked how attending had benefited his constituents. Despite clear Government rules that going to conferences must benefit constituents, the remainder of the councillors also struggled to justify their attendance.
Those rules were set out in a circular by then-environment minister Dick Roche in 2005.
‘Each councillor should personally ensure that his or her attendance at a conference is justified by reference to the benefits likely to accrue to the local community along with the costs involved.’ The circular also stipulates that councils should minimise the numbers attending each conference in order to reduce unnecessary expense to the Exchequer.
In a statement, South Tipperary Co. Council’s senior executive officer, John O’Mahony, said the event had cost E8,332 and that attendance was consistent with statutory obligations and council policy to conduct business through Irish when possible.
Rules stipulate that councillors provide a written report or make conference papers available at the subsequent monthly meeting.
Just one councillor – Tom Wood – provided a handwritten report on a single page, with two sentences describing his experience.
‘It was not always easy to understand the contributors and the organisers could do something to cater for my equals over the weekend,’ he wrote.
Town councillors do not share in the conference bonanza to the extent of county and city councillors but, through initiatives such as town twinning, enjoy significant opportunities for foreign travel.
Not content with one twin, many towns have five or more in different continents. Clonmel is twinned with six towns and Naas has managed five twinnings, in Italy, France, Austria and the US.
The EU has an annual budget of E12m for twinnings involving its 10,000 councils. Grants can be up to E20,000 – more than enough to cover a foreign trip or two.
Nevertheless, some towns choose to twin without applying for the strictly monitored grants.
‘Some places don’t go for them because you are tied down and have very limited freedom,’ said Paddy O’Callaghan, president of the Association of Municipal Authorities of Ireland Mr O’Callaghan said a few bad apples were responsible for giving the rest a bad name.
‘A lot of work can be done. You might have a problem and someone else might have already dealt with the issue. You can get invaluable advice and information.’ However, Liam Kenny, director of the Association of City and County Councils, which represents almost 900 councillors, refused point blank to comment on the issue of junketeering.
But in its last annual report, the association warned that it might have to cut back on its seven meetings a year, attended by 100 delegates at a cost of E35,000.
‘The sustainability of this level of meetings may have to be examined,’ the report warned.
NÌ thuigim an cheist…
FOR SOMEONE who recently attended a strictly Irish-speaking conference on behalf of his constituents, South Tipperary councillor Michael Anglim is strangely averse to being spoken to in his native tongue.
‘Are you going to shut up or are you going to speak to me in a language I understand?’ he demanded when the MOS called to ask why he and 10 colleagues attended an event they couldn’t understand.
The Cumann Merriman Scoil Gheimridh, held in January in Westport, Co. Mayo, was an all-Irish affair and the official website is a proudly English-free zone.
But that didn’t deter the 11 councillors from packing their weekend bags and heading for Westport, even if most hadn’t a word of Irish.
Perhaps it was the English press release describing the event as ‘a convivial winter holiday’ that attracted them. But Mr Anglim wasn’t saying. Asked why he attended, he hung up. Of the 11 who attended at the taxpayer’s expense, just one – Fianna Fail’s Tom Ambrose – was able to respond in Irish.
In Irish, Mr Ambrose said the conference provided the opportunity to learn about the development of the language.
None of the others was able to respond to an Irish-speaking caller. One, Jimmy O’Brien, hung up instantly and turned off his phone.
Another, Eddie O’Meara, could not be reached.
The rest struggled to explain their attendance.
‘Could you run it by me in English?’ asked Michael Fitzgerald, who said he took notes for his student-teacher daughter.
‘I’m not able to speak Irish – could you speak English?’ said Denis Landy, before declining to comment on the benefits to his constituents.
‘I haven’t any Irish,’ said Cllr Liam Ahern. ‘I can speak it but I’m not a fluent speaker. I went there simply to support the language.’ ‘Hang on a second, I haven’t the Irish very well,’ said Christy Kinahan. ‘Most of the people on the social side spoke English – you get through it that way.’ Michael Maguire said he ‘wouldn’t be well up in the Irish’ while Seanie Lonergan said he had no Irish.
‘You have to go to one to find out what it is like. I won’t be going to another one,’ he added.
Tom Wood, who at least took notes at the conference, answered in English.
THIS STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE IRISH MAIL ON SUNDAY ON 24/06/2007. Author, Michael O’Farrell, Investigative Correspondent.
