By: Michael O’Farrell
Investigators Editor
A TAXPAYER-funded housing charity paid up to €20,000 so its chief executive could stay at an exclusive private members’ club in Dublin city centre instead of relocating from his home in Cork. Mr O’Keeffe became CEO of Cooperation Housing Ireland (CHI) in 2010 on the understanding he would work from its HQ in Dublin.
But this never happened. Instead, CHI paid up to €6,000 a year, for almost four years, to allow him travel to and stay at the Stephen’s Green Hibernian Club for a couple of days each month while he attended HQ in Dublin.
In addition to this, Mr O’Keeffe’s company credit card was used to pay more than €22,000, largely on restaurants, flights and hotels for himself, other members of the board and CHI employees, in just one year. Those expenses relate to 2012, a difficult year for housing charities because of stringent restraints on Government funding at the time.
Mr O’Keeffe, previously a regional manager with CHI in Cork, was appointed CEO in September 2010 and left in July 2014 to become chief executive for economic development on the sub-tropical island of St Helena.
During his time as CEO at CHI, the charity paid Mr O’Keeffe’s rail travel to Dublin and accommodation fees at the exclusive Stephen’s Green Hibernian Club, at a cost of up to €6,000 a year.
The Hibernian club boasts that it ‘is a favourite city centre spot for members and their guests, with the comfort and privacy you would expect of Ireland’s premier private member club’, a world away from the lives lived by the 2,000 social housing tenants managed by CHI.
A confidential breakdown of Mr O’Keeffe’s expenses shows his rail travel and accommodation at the club cost more than €6,000 in 2012. This was treated as a benefit in kind. In July 2012 it was agreed to reduce it to €5,000 a year.
CHI was known as Nabco at the time and a CHI spokesman confirmed: ‘Nabco did initially require Mr O’Keeffe to locate to Dublin, but subsequently decided to accept that he would continue to reside in Cork.’ The spokesman did not say why this was accepted.
When asked repeatedly in recent weeks, Mr O’Keeffe also declined to comment on the decision. A oneline statement from him read: ‘During my period of employment with Nabco I reported to the board of Nabco and met all the terms and conditions of my employment.
The board of Nabco approved all remuneration and expenses.’ His company credit card was used in restaurants including Matt the Thresher, FX Buckleys and McGrattan’s Dance Café Bar. His expenses were signed off by then chairman Declan Hudson.
Mr O’Keeffe’s company credit card statements detail how more than €22,000 was spent in 2012.
Further CHI credit card statements, in the name of an administrator at CHI, appear to detail thousands more spent on travel, meals and luxury accommodation.
In all, thanks to a protected disclosure from a whistleblower, the Irish Mail on Sunday has seen credit card statements accounting for more than €30,000 in expenditure in 2012, much of it involving foreign travel.
Details include:
-A 2012 trip to Niagara Falls in Canada by Mr O’Keeffe and his wife Áine;
-Trips by Mr O’Keeffe and other board members to Lyon, Athens, London, Bulgaria, Brussels and Madrid;
-Bills for between €1,100 and €2,300 at premier four-star hotels in Cork, Galway, Lyon and Madrid.
Despite the difficult economic climate, all 15 CHI board members travelled to Brussels in April 2012 for a three-day trip with flights alone costing €2,414.
The trip, which cost an unknown amount in hotel and meal expenses, was related to the ‘International Year of the Cooperative’ celebration in Belgium that month.
The following month, a CHI staff member was booked to fly to Burgas in Bulgaria at a cost of €503 for flights alone This five-day trip appears related to a European Young Cooperators Network meeting to which CHI sent a delegate.
But the most frequent international travellers appear to have been Mr O’Keeffe and the thenchairman Mr Hudson.
In addition to the trip to Brussels, Mr O’Keeffe and Mr Hudson flew to Lyon in the summer of 2012 where a hotel bill of €1,325 was charged to Mr O’Keeffe’s card at the four-star Mercure Saxe Hotel. Flights cost more than €700.
This trip appears to related to the CECODHAS Housing Europe General Assembly, held in Lyon in June 2012.
On May 23, Aer Lingus and Air Canada flights worth €1,071 were booked for Mr O’Keeffe and his wife to Quebec and Winnipeg. The Canada trip related to his attendance at the annual general meeting of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada in Niagara Falls at this time.
Other records show that on July 4, Aer Lingus and British Airways flights to Athens via Cork were booked for Mr O’Keeffe, at a cost of €1,504. And in September Mr Hudson flew to Madrid where Mr O’Keeffe’s credit card was used to pay two bills amounting to €1,142 at the four-star NV Sanvy Hotel.
Mr O’Keeffe’s card was charged €2,302 at the Carlton Hotel Galway in October and €1,272 at the Clarion Hotel in Cork that month.
Mr Hudson resigned from the charity in 2016 after an MoS investigation revealed he had routinely signed entire cheque books in advance without knowing what they would be used for – a practice that eliminated crucial corporate governance control.
An MoS investigation separately showed that Nabco had also used forged signatures on cheques for years and set up a bank account with a forged signature purporting to be that of a former chairman.
An internal inquiry into these concerns was initiated during Mr O’Keeffe’s tenure on foot of a complaint from a whistleblower. The results of the inquiry were never made public.
In a statement to the MoS, a spokesman for CHI said Mr O’Keeffe had been the charity’s representative on a number of international bodies such as the Co-operative Section of CECHODHAS Housing Europe where he was vice-president.
They said the fact that 2012 was International Year of the Cooperative resulted in increased travel requirements for Mr O’Keeffe and other board members.
The charity added that Mr O’Keeffe’s credit card was one of only two cards that CHI/Nabco had in 2012 and said his card was therefore used for general expenditure.
‘It would therefore be incorrect to represent the expenditure on the credit card account as being attributable to any one person’s expenses,’ the spokesman said.
CHI did not answer questions about whether or not the charity paid for Mrs O’Keeffe to travel to Canada and how much this might have cost.
