Department criticised over €625,000 credit card bill

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE:SPENDING OF €625,000, which included restaurant bills for more than €2,000 at a time, air travel, flowers and hairdressing, led to criticism of the Department of Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation yesterday.

Chairman of the Oireachtas Committee of Public Accounts John McGuinness said the spending on credit card accounts in the name of the Health and Safety Authority between 2005 and 2011 should have prompted a swifter response from the department.

Mr McGuinness said the spending had come to light last year through a citizen’s request under the Freedom of Information Act. But he said he could not understand why the department, which had promised the committee a full report, had not yet got that report.

Mr McGuinness told secretary general of the department John Murphy it was not acceptable that the spending continued during the years when the economy collapsed after 2008. He wanted answers on who carried out the spending, if it was authorised, and if it was not authorised what attempts had been made to discipline those involved and recover the money.

He believed nothing justified a spend of €2,208 on a board meeting of the HSA in 2009 “just because it was the last meeting of the board and spouses were invited”. Mr McGuinness also said the department had not dealt efficiently or effectively with the issue since the freedom of information request and it would seem from the public point of view “that nothing much has happened since then”.

Mr Murphy said there had been a “substantial” amount of work done in going back over thousands of records.

He said total credit card expenditure was €625,000 – which represented 0.4 per cent of the HSA budget – of which about €20,000- €25,000 had been identified as questionable and further information on this was being sought.

He added that an update was provided to the committee in November 2011 and in the last week further responses had been received by the HSA.

Mr Murphy said he did not want to give the committee the impression the only impetus in securing a full report was to satisfy the committee, as these were serious issues for the department. He said credit card spending had been severely restricted in recent years. Currently, just two officers of the HSA were allowed credit cards.

However, Mr McGuinness said it was very hard to explain the issue to somebody who was refused a medical card “because they were one euro over the limit”.