By: Michael O’FarrellÂ
Investigations Editor
FORMER Rehab chiefs Frank Flannery and Angela Kerins (pictured right) enjoyed a decadelong spree of five-star business trips. The itineraries included trips to Japan, New Zealand, the USA, Norway, Greece, Taiwan and Finland, with champagne social events, private boat tours and golf.
As recently as June 2012 – with Ms Kerins’s €234,000 salary already a subject of controversy – the two charity bosses were photographed at a lavish reception in Norway, sipping champagne before a spread of smoked salmon and caviar canapés, just months after Rehab let 15 intellectually disabled workers go in Galway due to the ‘economic downturn and poor market conditions’.
The revelation comes amid mounting pressure on the two to appear before the PAC at a key hearing on the Rehab controversy this Thursday. Last night, it was reported that Mr Flannery had not made up his mind whether to attend the hearing and committee members said they were equally unclear as to Ms Kerins’ intentions.
She finished work as chief executive yesterday, having announced her resignation on Wednesday. Last month, Mr Flannery resigned from the charity, which receives €83m a year from the taxpayer.
He stepped down from the board of Rehab – and from his role in Fine Gael – after revelations related to his work as a paid lobbyist.
He was paid €77,000 by Rehab for lobbying in 2011-2012 and a further €60,000 by Philanthropy Ireland in 2012 for fulfilling his unpaid role as chairman of the Forum on Philanthropy – an organisation of which Philanthropy Ireland is a constituent member.
But PAC members were adamant that they still wanted to question the two, regardless of the resignations.
Today, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal more than a dozen trips that Mr Flannery and/or Ms Kerins undertook as representatives of Rehab to two international umbrella organisations for disability charities, in countries including Japan, New Zealand, the USA, Norway, Greece, Taiwan and Finland.
Both Mr Flannery and Ms Kerins have been directors and senior executives of the two umbrella groups. Mr Flannery co-founded the European Platform for Rehabilitation in 1993 and founded Workability International in 2002.
The Norway reception was for the Brussels-based EPR, of which Ms Kerins is president. Mr Flannery is a past president. Rehab pays for two EPR memberships – one for RehabCare, headed by Ms Kerins, and one for Rehab’s training division, the National Learning Network, headed by Mr Flannery.
The extent of Mr Flannery’s travels on NLN business may infuriate staff back home who earn an average of €30,000 and currently face wage cuts and pay freezes.
Other trips taken by Mr Flannery and Ms Kerins were to conferences organised by Workability International, based in Sydney, Australia. Rehab also maintains a membership of WI.
WI members pay €10,000 a year for a ‘platinum’ membership – but Rehab declined to say what level of membership it had.
In a statement, Rehab said two EPR memberships – costing as much as €16,000 each – were required because RehabCare and the NLN ‘are independent companies with different focuses and each has a range of partnerships with other organisations within EPR in their respective fields’.
Mr Flannery referred questions from the MoS about the trips in recent years to Rehab, as did Ms Kerins. Rehab confirmed that it funded any business trips that executives were required to take but did not provide any details of costs.
Questions to Rehab and Mr Flannery about how he was listed as an NLN executive by the EPR throughout the years 2006-2011, when he was not a director of Rehab or the NLN, went unanswered. Mr Flannery resigned as a director and board member of Rehab and the NLN in 2006, returning in 2011. But he continued to attend EPR meetings and continued to be listed in EPR annual reports as a representative of the NLN. During the same period, he is referred to as the ‘international adviser to the Rehab Group’ by WI literature.
The Rehab statement pointed to the ‘invaluable exchanges of information’ during working sessions of EPR and WI conferences.
‘Rehab collaborates with a number of European organisations to ensure its services are to the forefront of best practice,’ the statement said.
Rehab said Mr Flannery’s work at these conferences included ‘preparation and delivery of conference presentations, chairing and participating in working groups and committees and delivering on workplans related to these’.
Mr Flannery and/or Ms Kerins attended seven WI annual conferences between 2003 and 2012 in Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, Taiwan, Japan and twice in the US.
There were other annual conferences during this time but it is not clear if either attended. By rule, the WI board is also supposed to meet at least quarterly, including at least two face-to-face meetings.
Between 2009 and 2013, the MoS has confirmed, one or both of them attended five EPR annual conferences – two of which were in Ireland. Other locations were Norway, Greece and, jointly, Finland and Estonia. Both Mr Flannery and Ms Kerins attended the 2012 Norway EPR conference, where they were photographed enjoying the lavish dinners and receptions.
Other social highlights of that conference – which was held in the historical Strand Hotel in Fevik, where writer Roald Dahl and his wife, Oscar-winner Patricia Neal, were regular guests – included a boat trip with shrimps and white wine and a barbecue on the beach.
Previous conferences in Athens (2011) and Finland-Estonia (2010) were attended by the two. The 2013 conference was hosted by Dublin and the 2009 event was held in Ms Kerins’s home city of Waterford.
In Greece, where Ms Kerins, wearing a red dress, was photographed dancing happily with colleagues, the delegation was treated to a theatrical performance called ‘Mythical Greek Routes – The Return Of Odysseus To Ithaca’.
And during the 2010 conference in Finland-Estonia, guests were ferried between a luxury hotel in Helsinki and a spa hotel in Tallinn, on opposite sides of the Gulf of Finland.
Both Rehab bosses attended the WI annual conference in Bergen, Norway, in 2003 and the 2007 conference in Stockholm, where a private reception was held in the City Hall – one of the most beautiful buildings in Sweden and the venue for the annual Nobel Prize banquet.
The Swedish event also included a reception at the Vasa Museum – home of a restored 17th-century ship that is considered one of the top tourist attractions in the world. Social programmes included a choice of ‘boat trip to Drottningholm Palace or Old Town Walkabout’.
Ms Kerins also attended a 2011 WI conference in Orlando, Florida – where the event brochure encouraged delegates to visit Disney World and Universal Studios – and a 2012 WI conference in Taipei, Taiwan, at the five-star Palais de Chine Hotel.
Mr Flannery also attended other WI conferences in San Diego, California (2002), Sapporo, Japan (2008), Christchurch, New Zealand (2004) and Washington (2006). The fiveday Washington event included aperitifs at the French Embassy, after which buses took delegates to enjoy an evening in Dupont Circle – a popular area full of dining, shops and evening activities.
The final day of the conference was entirely devoted to a choice of golf at the Blue Mash – Maryland’s top-rated golf course – or a historic Annapolis day tour.
‘Golfers will meet in the hotel lobby at 9am and will return to the hotel at approximately 4pm,’ the conference schedule reads. Those who chose the day tour were promised a visit to the State House, downtown shopping, lunch at a local tavern, a visit to the United States Naval Academy and a cruise around Annapolis harbour on the banks of the scenic Severn River.
WI and EPR events aside, Mr Flannery and Ms Kerins also travelled to an event called the Chautauqua Symposium on disability in the picturesque town of Mayville in upstate New York, in 2011.
During the two-day event at the lakeside Chautauqua Suites Hotel, symposium speakers and attenders ‘were treated to a cruise on Chautauqua Lake aboard the steamship the Chautauqua Belle’.
Taoiseach can order procedures committee to compel pair to appear before the Dáil
By: Michael O’Farrell
TAOISEACH Enda Kenny last night refused to say if he will compel former Rehab bosses Angela Kerins and Frank Flannery to appear before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) if they do not do so voluntarily.
The committee wants to question the highly paid former executives about a number of issues, such as lump sum payments they will receive, pension entitlements and the value of any bonuses received prior to 2009.
If they decide not to attend, any decision to compel them will be one for the Government.
To compel a witness to appear the PAC will have to ask the Dáil’s Committee on Procedure and Privileges (CPP) for permission. But with seven of the 10 CPP members from government parties, any decision is effectively in the gift of the Government.
Senior political figures told the MoS that the legislation to allow for witnesses to be compelled was seriously flawed. Said one: ‘We say there’s compellability. But we know the Government controls the CPP so that can always be blocked.’
PAC committee chairman John McGuinness has said that he ‘absolutely expects’ Mrs Kerins and Mr Flannery to attend, saying: ‘We can request compellability but my belief is that it shouldn’t go that far.’
When the IMOS specifically asked if the taoiseach would direct the CPP to compel the two to attend, a spokeswoman said: ‘The taoiseach has stated on a number of occasions that they should appear. Oireachtas committees are completely independent.’
