[Article] Fraud, Kickbacks and corruption in CIE

[Mark Hennessy]

This will hardly shock folks here but CIE are squandering millions of our taxes in an uncountable way.

When the CIE books don't add up at the end of the year, what do they do?
a) Find out where the waste happened, sack those responsible and ensure it doesn't happen again?
b) Introduce car parking charges and put up the cost of tickets?


http://www.independent.ie/business/i...s-1910407.html

AN explosive top secret report on Iarnrod Eireann has found that kickbacks, squandering of millions of euro in taxpayers' money and collusion with contractors, and incompetence has been rife in the loss making semi-state company for several years, a Sunday Independent investigation can reveal.

[Mark Gleeson]

Those of us in the know, know how deep it goes and very senior people are going to find themselves in serious trouble.

We know all about the holiday cottage scam

[roamling]

is there any chance that CIE can be forced to make the "top secret explosive" report available to the public?

[Mark Gleeson]

If the report was made public several very senior staff in both CIE and IE could be in line for a P45 so they are of course going to cover themselves.

We have details on many parts but have to be very careful what we state in public. We are aware of more issues than those raised in yesterday article. There are issues to do with the management of internal employee insurance funds. The Portlaoise incident relates to wooden sleepers disappearing, not only is it fraud but also illegal to sell used railway sleepers due environmental reasons.

The issues are generally local level middle management who appear to have been able to operate under the radar of HQ. Though how HQ dealt with certain staff afterwards is curious.

[PLUMB LOCO]

Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson

Those of us in the know, know how deep it goes and very senior people are going to find themselves in serious trouble.

We know all about the holiday cottage scam

No - must have missed this - can you expand upon?

[roamling]

maybe an Oireachtas hearing could apply pressure on senior staff within CIE and IE . At the end of the day its the taxpayer's money and the days of squandering and cover up are over.

[Mark Gleeson]

If we gave details we could get sued by both CIE and the member of staff involved. Needless to say they know we know. We can't give the location, the cost or the nature of the works undertaken, we know all three. This incident was the trigger for the fraud squad to get called in.

This one incident could possibly have the biggest impact of all once the full details can be made public.

[essoII]

this is actually highly interesting...will be interesting to see what comes of this. If any allegations of corruption are confirmed I think a major restructuring at senior levels will be a certainty..

[Colm Moore]

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/...256510110.html

Fraud at Iarnród Éireann costs €2.5m
TIM O'BRIEN

AN INTERNAL fraud at Iarnród Éireann has cost the company €2.5 million in materials and loss of EU grants, the company said yesterday.

The fraud involved the unauthorised sale of redundant sleepers from the company’s North Wall site and what Iarnród Éireann called “other plant procurement issues”. It was identified in reviews by the company, which said three staff had been dismissed and gardaí informed.

The company said issues relating to the loss of sleepers, plant procurement and removal of soil had cost the company €900,000.

However, a further loss of €800,000 was suffered due to the non-eligibility of procurement activities for EU grants, while the procurement issues themselves had cost the company €780,000.

In a statement yesterday, the company said of €2.5 million, just €670,000 related to fraud within Iarnród Éireann.

“To place this in context, these areas collectively in the period reviewed . . . had expenditure on external vendors totalling approximately €800 million and the amounts of losses represent less than one-third of 1 per cent of the total external expenditure in these departments”.

Fine Gael transport spokesman Fergus O’Dowd said the statement showed Iarnród Éireann should not be exempt from Freedom of Information requests. “CIÉ is an organisation that hoovers up over €300 million a year in taxpayers’ money to help run its loss-making services. This is in addition to the €1 billion-plus it has received to help purchase new infrastructure.

“I have consistently argued that there was absolutely no transparency on how this money was spent or accounted for.”

[Mark Gleeson]

and more

Originally Posted by Irish Examiner

Dempsey demands CIÉ fraud report
By Seán McCárthaigh
Tuesday, October 13, 2009

TRANSPORT Minister Noel Dempsey has demanded a full report from CIÉ over an internal company investigation which uncovered losses of €2.5 million due to alleged fraud and collusion.

Mr Dempsey confirmed yesterday he was unaware of the report by consultants – Baker, Tilly, Ryan, Glennon – before details of it were published in the Sunday Independent this week. Clearly annoyed at the failure of CIÉ to inform him about the report’s existence, Mr Dempsey said he had now sought a full explanation from the state transport company. The minister said he should have been informed about the report, which claimed losses of millions of euro of taxpayers money were incurred due to fraud and poor control procedures at CIÉ. Although it appeared CIÉ had detected the problems and subsequently acted to redress the situation, Mr Dempsey said no waste of taxpayers’ money could ever be condoned.

CIÉ spokesman Barry Kenny admitted yesterday the report had uncovered evidence of malpractice within Iarnród Éireann, which had resulted in three employees being fired.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr Kenny insisted that losses of just €670,000 were suffered as a result of the unauthorised sale of railway sleepers from Iarnród Éireann’s North Wall depot in Dublin. However, he was forced to admit that the company had also suffered additional losses of €1.8m as a result of poor procedures and controls in its procurement policy.

CIÉ also acknowledged that a payment of €257,000 to an unsuccessful applicant for a tender to remove top soil from a site at North Wall in Dublin was the subject of a Garda investigation and other legal proceedings.

Mr Kenny said the losses should be viewed in the context of overall spending of €800m by CIÉ over the four-year period covered by the consultants’ report.

Meanwhile, Fine Gael transport spokesman Fergus O’Dowd called on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport to arrange an emergency meeting to discuss the allegations that millions of euro were squandered by CIÉ.

Mr O’Dowd said CIÉ chairman John Lynch and Iarnród Éireann chief executive Dick Fearn should appear before such a meeting to provide an explanation.

The Louth TD said the Freedom of Information Act needed to be expanded to allow quasi-commercial companies like CIÉ to be opened up to full and proper scrutiny.


Read more: http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/demps...#ixzz0TnklgHDZ

[drumcondra commuter]

"Fine Gael transport spokesman Fergus O’Dowd said the statement showed Iarnród Éireann should not be exempt from Freedom of Information requests."

Say what now? They are?!?!

[Mark Gleeson]

The CIE group is exempt from FOI, the RPA are not.

Despite this we have obtained large volumes of documents through FOI as CIE seems to send copies of most things to the Department of Transport which is where we file our requests

[dermo88]

I hinted at this a few years ago and it was unsubstantiated allegations by me back then. I did not have access to direct and definite proof, but there was too many - shall we say strange coincidences taking place. Then I was warned of the risks of Platform11 being sued. So I think, knowing the extent of Irish libel laws, its dangerous territory, but say with a mild grin, "I told you so". I'd happen to respect the libel laws here than any other website, where I will fire off on all cylinders.

Its merely stating what we all know, and certain Irish business persons involved with communications and a former transport minister have a reputation for suing people and organisations for the slightest infringements.

[Mark Gleeson]

Since the days of Mini CTC we have all known of issues, but of course the inquiry got bogged down due to a completely unrelated legal problem. There was the newspapers at stations scam back in the day. Mini CTC led to a serious rethink in procurement which seemed to be delivering improvements but it appears the system was open to abuse

We can't name people, we are keeping a close eye on matters. One name has come up more than once.

2.5 million is a very large sum of money, it buys quite a lot of stuff.

[zag]

P11 committee,

With all due respect, these types of posts indicate a very strong Famous-5 type approach going on here.

All too often there are posts from committee members indicating that "we know all about this but can't publish", "we know they know we know", etc . . .

I mean, if you (as a customer representative body) are aware of details, have documents, etc . . . that prove (as you claim) cases of fraud among other things, do you not think there is somewhat of an onus on you to publish, to provide details to newspapers, to provide details to relevant Oireachtas committees, to amenable TDs, etc . . .

If you have the hard evidence you suggest then a quick read of the Sunday newspapers will give you more than a few names of journos who will take this hard evidence and publish.

How do you think it will reflect on P11 in a few years time if/when these abuses come to light and P11 is asked for a comment and they say "Oh, well of course we knew about this yeeeeeeeears ago but we didn't actually do anything about it. Oh gosh no, we didn't do anything. There was a good reason, but I can't remember it now."

Seriously, if the issues are as cut and dry as they are made out to be then why do you not publicise them or make the details available to people who will publicise ?

z

[Mark Hennessy]

Zag,

You think we dont report this information?

IE are not subject to FOI, when information comes to us and we pass it to a journo, do you think IE give them anything to work on?

Do you think opposition TDs get anywhere trying to get information on the internals of IE?

The fact that the sindo got this report ahead of Dempsey show's that IE are accountable to no one. Hopefully, as Mark G points out, the fact that this has come into the open will lead to pressure to reveal more details of the wrong doings within CIE.

[zag]

Mark,

The point I'm trying to make is the RUI seem to specialise in saying "We have the details, we know what happened and who did it, and there's lots of it going on but we can't tell anyone at all. Far too secret/complicated/techincal for anyone else to get to grips with. It's probably safer if we hold on to the information. You might go mad if you knew what we know."

I understand that IE are not subject to FOI, but RUI is saying they *have* the information, so you don't need to FOI it.

What I'm trying to get at is that saying you have the information is all well and good, but it's putting it to use that is the important part.

I could come on here every few days and say "I know all about the mess up with the donut supplies on a certain train ex-Dublin on Tuesdays. I've been watching it for some time and I have a dossier compiled but I can't let you into the details. I'm keeping my eagle-eye on it and will be for some time to come. I know who you are." but it doesn't actually result in any improvements and changes.

I'm not doubting that you guys have much valuable information, but sitting on it and telling people you have it but can't use it isn't going to change things.

"You think we dont report this information?" - based on the comments in the various threads here, yes, I think you don't report it. All I seem to see is references to having it but not being able to publish it.

"Do you think opposition TDs get anywhere trying to get information on the internals of IE?" - no, but if you guys claim to have the data then why not pass it on ?

z

[Thomas Ralph]

A lot of the information isn't watertight; defamation laws mean you need to be certain before you go splashing accusations about.

[zag]

100% agree and accept the defamation thing. I wouldn't go posting details saying that John Doe in IE was on a serious kickback from a vendor if I only had a hunch about it or had heard rumours about it.

However, if I had (as seems to be claimed in some of the posts) pretty strong evidence about it and I wasn't fully sure of it *but it was still a serious issue* I would be in touch with one of our more crusading journos and feed him/her a little of the information. Or I would be in touch with the opposition transport people and feed them a little of the *evidence*.

Maybe RUI are doing this, but it's not communicated in the posts here.

I'm thinking of posts like this - "Those of us in the know, know how deep it goes and very senior people are going to find themselves in serious trouble.

We know all about the holiday cottage scam"

If it is so sure that high ranking people will be in serious trouble then by all means plough ahead and make it happen. If it's not so sure, or it's just rumour then it's no different than I said in an earlier post - "I know all about the mess up with the donut supplies on a certain train ex-Dublin on Tuesdays. I've been watching it for some time and I have a dossier compiled but I can't let you into the details. I'm keeping my eagle-eye on it and will be for some time to come. I know who you are." I can say this as much as I like but there will continue to be donut irregularities on that train.

Seriously guys, if there's hard evidence then you should act on it. If you have acted on it then you should communicate this. If there's no hard evidence then you should perhaps rethink some of the definitive wording you are using.

I'm all for armchair fist-wavers (like me) taking the occasional potshot at IE, but I'm doing it as an individual. I think RUI needs to step up to the plate as an orgainsation with an interest in improving the transport environment. If you have hard evidence you ought to use it in my view.

z

[Traincustomer]

I'm not going to pass comment on the matters as I'm not in any way au fait with them, apart from what I've read here, but against this background I think it's deplorable that we might have cutbacks in CIÉ services in the future (as already publically highlighted and there have already been cuts in Dublin Bus). Again the ordinary bus or rail user suffers. How unjust and unethical. A strong signal needs to be sent to the powers that be that it is not ok for some to have the life of Reilly so to speak at the expense of public transport.