By Michael O’Farrell
Investigations Editor
SINN Féin’s Liadh Ní Riada ran a publicly funded TV production firm that never filed annual accounts, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Failing to file annual accounts – required to ensure transparency and accountability – is an offence. It also runs contrary to comments made this week by Ms Ní Riada as she criticised Michael D Higgins’s use of the non-audited Presidential allowance.
‘As a public rep we are expected to be transparent and accountable in all of our financial dealings. It is taxpayers’ money,’ she told Pat Kenny’s Virgin Media presidential debate this week.
Ms Ní Riada set up production firm Ilanna Teo in 1992 and went on to make a number of publicly funded TV programmes for TG4 and RTÉ. These productions included the 1993 documentary, Taibhtramh Ar Rio, which was presented by then-minister MichaelD Higgins from the Earth Summit in Rio. This programme was commissioned by RTÉ and aired on Network 2.
Following the making of Taibhtramh Ar Rio – but prior to the show’s broadcast – Mr Higgins appointed Ní Riada to the board tasked with establishing TG4.
In 1995 Ilanna Teo also made a six-part series about women who live in Gaeltacht areas. This was funded by RTÉ and aired on RTÉ 1 over six weeks. Then, in 1998, it made An Gobán Saor – a drama funded by the Irish Film Board, which aired on TG4.
Despite making the above productions with money provided largely – if not entirely by the taxpayer – Ilanna Teo didn’t file any accounts or annual returns before being dissolved in 1999.
Subsequently in 2001, Ms Ní Riada incorporated a new production firm – LnR Teoranta – with husband Nicholas Forde, a statue restorer who was convicted of drink driving in 2008. This firm made two programmes for TG4 – a documentary on St Gobnait in 2002 called Aingeal Mhuscrai and a 2004 programme about the culture, history and story of tea called Marbh Le Tae Agus Marbh Gan É. According to its filed accounts, LnR Teoranta paid Ms Ní Riada and her husband almost €25,000 between 2002 and 2005 before being dissolved. There is no transparency or visibility from the accounts of LnR Teoranta as to the amounts it received from TG4 or other publicly funded sources.
Responding yesterday Ms Ní Riada would only say: ‘My record in Europe is exemplary. My personal finances are all above board. Sinn Féin does not have an average industrial wage policy and my wages are set by the European Parliament. The companies I was part of and the projects I worked on were all above board.’
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