Fisheries body paid almost €1m to 24 legal firms in three years
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Marine body Inland Fisheries Ireland spent just under €1m on the legal services of 24 separate firms between 2020 and 2022.
However, there is no indication at present what services that money was actually spent on.
Earlier this week Environment Minister Eamon Ryan said that nearly 10 protected disclosures alleging wrongdoing at the body have been made.
However, the body’s official logs state that no such disclosures were received in either 2020 or 2021.
New figures released by the IFI to Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy show that the body spent €996,000 over the past three years on payments to various solicitors’ firms.
Three of those firms — Byrne Wallace, Coakley Moriarty, and Kevin Quirke — were paid €379,000, €118,000, and €170,000 respectively, more than 66% of the overall spend.
The money paid to Byrne Wallace, a business law practice based in Dublin and New York, was dispersed in 2021 and 2022. Some €229,000 of that money was paid out last year.
Asked what the money had been spent on, a spokesperson for IFI said that it typically “engages the services of various legal firms to aid with fisheries prosecutions, general and environmental governance, property and employment law”.
“Payments made to external suppliers or advisors are approved by the appointed manager over the applicable area and controlled by the finance team,” they said, adding that IFI’s costs “are collated and published annually in its financial statement”.
There has, however, been no annual report for IFI since the 2020 iteration which was published last August, since the resignations of a number of members of the IFI board left it incapable of forming a quorum, meaning that annual accounts could not be signed off upon nor presented to the Oireachtas.
Last month, Mr Ryan took the unusual step of removing the remaining three board members of IFI on a no-fault basis in preparation for the wholesale reconstitution of the board, a process projected to take up to six months.
Meanwhile, the minister exercised his powers to appoint former county managers Tom Barry and Seamus Neely to IFI, and charged them with prioritising the full and prompt consideration of a number of protected disclosures made in recent months.
Mr Ryan last year ordered a review of the organisation after a number of complaints were made about the management of finances and other issues.
It was discovered that 16 company vehicles were not insured, one of which was involved in a crash in 2021. Questions have also been raised about the use of a property in Co Mayo.
Fine Gael senator Seán Kyne, who had previously raised serious concerns about IFI, last month called for a full and independent investigation into the body.