By: Michael O’FarrellÂ
Investigations Editor
ESTABLISHING the expenses incurred by the board of the North & East Housing Association in recent years is not simple – even though the charity says that it is ‘committed to being open and transparent’.
‘A key part of that transparency’ – the charity’s website says – ‘is making sure that up-to-date information on our structure and finances is available to view.’
Presented on these pages, thanks to information obtained by the MoS, is the true detail of how taxpayers’ money was spent at North & East in 2013 alone.
However, nowhere in the accounts presented will you find reference to a €631 dinner incurred during one January 2012 board meeting, or a €3,163 weekend in Wexford in 2013.
Nor will you see the thousands spent on phone bills, iPads and other IT equipment for some members of the voluntary board, one of whom – vice chair Adrienne Smith – had been using a mobile, paid for by North & East, for her private employment with another entity.
Although included in the accounts, the expenditure is grouped in such a way that it is impossible, without the help of whistleblowers, to ever know these details.
Though the offices of North & East are based in Blanchardstown, west Dublin, the seven directors of the charity habitually met in the Paramount Hotel in Temple Bar in the city centre. These meetings were followed by meals in nearby restaurants, paid for by the charity – none of that is evident from the accounts. In 2012 these board meeting meals cost the charity €3,411.
Board meals in 2013 – for restaurants such as the Trocadero and Café Topolis – came to €4,673. Thousands more in travel, subsistence and other expenses were paid to the directors that year, with the final tally coming to more than €46,000, a figure listed as ‘board expenses’ in the 2013 income and expenditure breakdown.
However, after criticism from independent governance charity Boardmatch Ireland, that figure underwent a transformation. From then on the board expenses were presented as amounting to €4,680 for 2013. North & East says this change made the accounts more transparent.
‘The Board accepts that the accounts historically prepared by the Association were insufficiently transparent,’ a statement said. ‘That is why accounting practices have been improved.’
But it is not difficult to mask board expenses – as North & East appears to have done with its 2013 accounts – and it is hard for anyone reading the accounts to know how money is really being spent.
The charity says its governance practices have been improved through the appointment of four new directors in the past year. A new CEO, Vincent Keenan, was appointed in September 2014. But until this week the two most important board members – Ms Smith and chairman Pat Lennon – remained in place. So too have at least some of the inappropriate expense practices of the past.
