By Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
A TOP executive at St John of God has seen her salary cut by €15,000 in the wake of continuing revelations about management spending and care standards at the charity.
Clare Dempsey (pictured) – whose €125,000 salary was in breach of public sector pay rules – confirmed to parents of St John of God service users this week that her pay was now in compliance with HSE salary scales.
The news comes as internal sources told the Irish Mail on Sunday that a meeting of senior managers of the charity on Friday agreed that Brother Fintan Brennan Whitmore would become interim CEO of Saint John of God Hospitaller Ministries in place of John Pepper, who, as the MoS revealed last week, has been absent from work in recent times.
A charity spokesman declined to comment on these reports, or on whether Mr Pepper’s stepping aside was permanent or temporary. HSE officials, when contacted, said they were unaware of the change in management. They did however confirm that Ms Dempsey’s salary had been reduced from €125,000 to €110,000, backdated to September 2015. This means Ms Dempsey would have to repay approximately €17,000.
When her salary was brought up this week at a public meeting with the parents of service users of the charity’s St Raphael’s campus in Celbridge, Ms Dempsey revealed that she was now being paid in compliance with HSE pay scales.
‘Can I just say it’s not [€125,000]. My salary is now compliant,’ she told an angry parent who questioned the use of resources at the St John of God group.
However a spokesman for the group last night declined to comment on the pay cut. He also declined to discuss whether Ms Dempsey had refunded any money paid in excess of HSE pay scales. As the CEO of St John of God Community Services Ltd, Ms Dempsey was one of 14 managers who shared in a secret €1.6m payout that was not declared to the HSE in December 2013.
