Fisheries body tells PAC of 61 incorrectly authorised pollution cases that cost €170k
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The body charged with the preservation of Ireland’s inland waterways ran up a legal bill of more than €170,000 in prosecuting 61 incidents of pollution, some resulting in significant fish kills.
However, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) said that the 61 prosecutions, identified between March and June of last year, had been incorrectly authorised within the organisation due to a “technical issue”.
“IFI can confirm that 61 prosecutions have been affected with an estimated cost of €170,843,” the body told the Public Accounts Committee. Some 41 of those cases were eventually withdrawn.
An example of one of the more serious prosecutions which had been instigated was a fish kill on the River Rye in Co Kildare which IFI’s deputy chief executive, Cathal Gallagher, told the committee had led to concerns being expressed “by a lot of stakeholders” due to the case’s withdrawal.
While Mr Gallagher was unable to confirm the extent of the fish kill, local TD for the area Catherine Murphy noted that there had been in the region of “500 mortalities” as a result of the incident, and that her phone had “started hopping looking for consequences” in the aftermath.
The appearance at the PAC, the IFI’s first since last July, which had been somewhat overshadowed by the scandals emerging at RTÉ at the time, saw the organisation represented by Mr Gallagher due to the ongoing illness of chief executive Francis O’Donnell.
Mr O’Donnell has been on leave for several weeks, a fact which led to IFI’s appearance at PAC being delayed by more than a month, with Mr Gallagher appointed “on an interim basis” on March 6 of this year to carry out the functions of the chief executive.
In his opening statement, Mr Gallagher said that Mr O’Donnell is "ill and continues to be on leave”.
During the session, however, under questioning from Green TD Marc O Cathasaigh, Mr Gallagher declined to confirm that Mr O’Donnell is on leave as a result of illness, saying that Mr O’Donnell “is an employee and any leave is confidential to that particular employee”.
At the hearing last July, Mr O’Donnell had dealt with several controversial issues around the embattled organisation, whose entire board was stood down in early 2023 by Environment Minister Eamon Ryan on the back of several board resignations, including the rental of the €1.25m-valued Aasleagh House in Co Mayo to a junior employee of IFI for four years between 2017 and 2021, something Mr O’Donnell acknowledged at the time “was a mistake and shouldn’t have happened”.
PAC heard on Thursday from IFI finance chief Suzanne Campion that those “circumstances can’t happen again” due to the introduction of new policies.
The building itself is set to be upgraded into an “international research hub”, Mr Gallagher said.