By: Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
THE State’s spending watchdog has been cleared to investigate Bus Éireann’s €166m school transport scheme after a lengthy Irish Mail on Sunday investigation into kickbacks for routes.
Until now the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy has never been allowed to audit any aspect of commercial semi-State companies such as Bus Éireann, even though millions in taxpayer funds support them.
But in a ground-breaking move spearheaded by the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee, an agreement has now been reached to allow a C&AG audit of procurement practices in the school transport scheme.
The move follows a lengthy MoS investigation into allegations of bribery and corruption within the scheme involving some private contractors who allege they paid kickbacks for lucrative routes.
The contractors, who allege they paid for foreign holidays and gave cash to Bus Éireann officials, claim they lost their routes if they refused to pay. These claims – along with supporting evidence obtained by the MoS – have now been forwarded by the Oireachtas Transport Committee to gardaí for investigation.
Speaking this weekend, PAC chairman John McGuinness said the move to allow the C&AG examine the school transport accounts was the ‘breakdown of a major barrier’: ‘The C&AG, the Department and ourselves at the PAC – arising from the matters raised about the scheme – have agreed that this will now happen,’ he said.
‘The C&AG will be undertaking to do that work and out of that will come all of the information that an independent audit can reveal.’ In response to queries from the MoS this week, a spokesman for the C&AG said he was aware of the development but could not yet comment further.
Speaking before the PAC on May 15, Department of Education Secretary General Seán Ó Foghlú said his department, which funds the school transport scheme, was happy to facilitate the C&AG’s involvement. ‘We reflected on that and discussed it with our partner Departments… We concluded that we could see no reason the [C&AG] would not be fully free to follow the school transport money into Bus Éireann if he so wished,’ he said.
‘As a semi-State body, Bus Éireann has the power not to accept it but because it agrees, there is no difficulty. If, for example, the [C&AG] wishes to examine the effectiveness of procurement by Bus Éireann there would be no difficulty with that.’ Mr McCarthy was also at the committee and when asked if he was aware of these new arrangements he confirmed: ‘Yes, we have spoken about it.’
Meanwhile it emerged this week that Bus Éireann has made significant changes to a report into the allegations of bribery that it was ordered to prepare by Transport Minister Leo Varadkar in the wake of this newspaper’s revelations.
The version of the report first published on the company’s website last month has now been altered with several crucial paragraphs taken out.
The original version contains the following statement: ‘Whereas we cannot categorically conclude that it has never happened, there is no evidence to suggest that any gift has been accepted by any individual in a manner that breaches the company’s code of business ethics.
‘As regards the allegation of corruption we have found no evidence to suggest that there is/was deliberate exclusion of any party from the tendering process or that any party obtained a contract by improper or corrupt means.’
But the current version of the report – which has now replaced the first one online – does not contain this conclusion anywhere even though it is central to the report and was reported widely throughout the media at the time of the report’s release.
In a statement this week, the company acknowledged the discrepancies. It said it was in the process of finalising a third version of the report for publication online.
‘This was not intentional and was the result of drafts of the report being created, and edited, as required,’ a spokesman said. He said the correct and complete version of the report would be online next week.
