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Tom McCarthy tweetz:
Candlelight vigil is being held in Paul St Shopping Centre in Cork in aid of #CRC {Central Remedial Clinic]
Tag Archives: CRC
Minutes of THAT board meeting on March 25, 2013, in which the board of the Central Remedial Clinic approved former CEO Paul Kiely’s retirement package of €742,025.
Transcriptions from the Public Accounts Committee meeting here
CRC may face fraud probe in top-ups scandal (Irish Examiner)
Previously: Thud
‘You Just Feel Disgusted And Saddened’
UPDATE:
Brian Conlan has retained the services of a Public Relations firm. They have formally declined our invitation of right to reply #CRC
— Philip Boucher-Hayes (@boucherhayes) January 17, 2014
Who Okayed Paul Kiely’s €742,000 bung? Everybody’s running for cover now. PODCAST:http://t.co/6yK0c5njJU
— Philip Boucher-Hayes (@boucherhayes) January 17, 2014
Thud
at
It has emerged that the former CEO of the Central Remedial Clinic (CRC) Paul Kiely [above] was also a member of the board of The Care Trust – the charity fundraising body whose funds were used to top up Mr. Kiely’s pension when he stepped down from the clinic.
EXCLUSIVE: Newstalk learns Kiely sat on Board of CRC fundraiser (Newstalk)
[Top: Former CEO of Central Remedial Clinic, Paul Kiely and former director Jim Nugent and, above the charity’s headquarters in Clonskeagh, Dublin]
A mother whose son is dependent on the services of the Central Remedial Clinic went on Morning Ireland earlier.
Maria Nolan – who is mother to 17-month-old Oisín – spoke to Gavin Jennings and made an appeal to the public to continue to support the charity.
Maria Nolan: “Oisín really needs the CRC, he uses it every week, he goes approximately four times a week. He needs it for physiotherapy, occupational therapy, eat, drinking and swallowing clinic. And I also go the parent-toddler group myself, which is so vital for me. As, with Oisín’s condition, I felt somewhat of an outsider within my own community. So the CRC, for me, is a lifeline and a second home for me and Oisín”
Gavin Jennings: “When Oisín was discharged from hospital last August, last September…”
Maria: “Yeah, yes, the end of August he was discharged from Temple Street.”
Jennings: “And he was quite sick? You used the Central Remedial Clinic pretty soon after that. Tell me about your experience with them.”
Nolan: “My experience has been amazing. Oisín was discharged the end of the August and, literally, while, in his dischargment process, I received my letters from the CRC, welcoming me into their family more or less and all his appointments were set up immediately – his physiotherapy, occupational, everything was arranged. I didn’t have to ring, I didn’t have to follow up, I didn’t have to do anything. His appointments were laid out immediately. And we literally started the week after he was discharged.”
Jennings: “Have you experienced any cuts? Like the caller we heard to Liveline and other callers yesterday?”
Maria: “Personally, no, I haven’t myself, thank god, I haven’t. His physiotherapy has started back and he will be doing his eating, drinking, swallowing clinic very shortly. So, personally, no, thank god, I haven’t.”
Jennings: “What’s your reaction to the news that the bosses at the clinic were paying themselves such huge salaries from money donated to help people like your son?”
Maria: “You just, you feel disgusted and saddened but not just for yourself and for your child. You feel for the staff of the CRC – they’re so amazing, they all work so hard. You go in everyday and there’s always a smile on their faces. They’re amazing, amazing people who are so talented and gifted to work with children like Oisín and adults like Oisín and you can just feel that they’re so ashamed themselves and hoping that they’re not implicated, or feeling that we’re looking at them and judging them. For such…CRC, if you ever go in the front door of the CRC, the receptionist is just smiling at you, everyone is so nice, it’s just a second home from home.”
Maria: “…And for him [Paul Kiely] to do that…”
Jennings: “Maria there will be people listening this morning, many of whom who will have given money to the Central Remedial Clinic over the years, and many who want to, to continue to help children like your son. But they’re torn now, thinking that ‘well,last year for example, half that money didn’t got to services, it went to pay off a former boss’. What would you say to people who are passing a bucket or donation and are thinking ‘well, I want to help but I don’t want my money to go to pay salaries or pensions like that’.
Maria: “I understand completely. Before I had Oisín I knew of the CRC, but I didn’t know of really what it did. I just beg people, I know money is scarce and people don’t have money to give sometimes to charities but please don’t pass the bucket on the street. Do give. Just think of my son. Children like Oisín and adults like Oisín will be like this for the rest of their lives. They’ll always need the CRC and please don’t pass it, I beg of you, don’t pass it. You never know when you might need it yourself. I didn’t think that when I had my baby that I would need the CRC and I highly, highly need it and I will always need it, so please don’t pass it.”
Listen here
Previously: They Just Keep On Giving
(Sam Boal/Photocall ireland)
Fine Gael TD Kieran O’Donnell (above) questioned Brian Conlon (top), former CEO of Central Remedial Clinic this morning at a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee about revelations that Mr Conlon’s predecessor Paul Kiely received a pension package of €700,000 which was paid out of public donations to the charity.
Mr Conlon resigned as CEO in December. Prior to his CEO appointment he had been a member of the CRC board for eight years.
Grab a tay.
And CALL the guards.
Kieran O’Donnell: “You came in as CEO, you’re telling me it’s credible that a CEO of an organisation, which is bringing in about €1.4/€1.5million a year in donations, from ordinary people that are collecting, to provide services for ordinary people, not to be basically giving a divvy-up of the order of €700,000 to Mr [Paul] Kiely. You’re telling me that you had no knowledge of the €450,000 and the €250,000. Do you think it’s credible that the CEO, when you’re looking at the accounts, and you’re collecting €1.4million and literally, sitting in there is €450,000 of a transfer, which was put in as a donation, within the accounts of CRC which, clearly, was designed to misrepresent, at best, and a €250,000, a quarter of a million euro was transferred from peoples, that had been out collecting money for frontline, for service users, you’re telling me that you didn’t spot this? As CEO?”
Brian Conlon: “These adjustments that were going through…”
O’Donnell: “How can you call them adjustments? These, something of €700,000 is not an adjustment. €700,000, which is nearly three-quarters of a million euro is a crazy figure and personally, I’d be asking that Mr Kiely would refund the money to the CRC, to the CRC Friends and Supporters. So I’m asking you the question again. Surely. How often did you do accounts? Did you do monthly management accounts in Friends and Supporters?”
Conlon: “There was one set of accounts, at the end of the year, for Friends and Supporters. There was no management accounts done every month for Friends and Supporters.”
O’Donnell: “But surely you, as CEO, would be looking to see how much money was, of course, the problem is that Friends and Supporters always had, I think, they had a balance. What was the balance in the account, at the end of, when you took over, Mr Conlon?”
Conlon: “The balance in the Friends and Supporters was just over €12million.”
O’Donnell: “And we had the board here, previously, and I would have thought that money would have been put to better use for frontline users, than basically looking at, the question is, it’s about priorities. So obviously the €700,000, in the context of €14million was only a small amount.”
Later
O’Donnell: “Do you think it’s credible that as CEO, when you were looking at Friends and Supporters, and you’d two payments – one of €450,000 and one of €250,000 being put from CRC Friends and Supporters up to CRC, the main company, classified as a donation, it wasn’t a donation, it was effectively, putting the hand in the til of money that was collected by ordinary people up and down the country, to feather the nests of individuals in management in CRC. Now do you think it’s credible that you didn’t know about it, Mr Conlon?”
Conlon: “I did not know that the money was being used to fund Paul Kiely’s pension.”
O’Donnell: “What did you think it was being used for?”
Conlon: “To support…”
O’Donnell: “No, no, no, did you, do you think it’s credible that, as CEO, that when you’d be looking at bank statements or whatever, in terms of CRC, Friends and Supporters, that you would not ask the question, as to what was the €450,000 and €250,000 – where did it go and what was it used for? Do you think it’s credible, as CEO, that you would not ask that question?”
Conlon: “These matters were not…when I joined the CRC first, I had other priorities and my understanding was that Mr Kiely’s pension had been sorted out.”
O’Donnell: “And what did you understand his pension was?”
Conlon: “As he explained that…”
O’Donnell: “€200,000?”
Conlon: “Yes.”
O’Donnell: “So, did you ask where the €450,000 and the €250,000 – that would have come in? Do you have a financial controller in the CRC?”
Conlon: “Yes.”
O’Donnell: “Did the Financial Controller, do you have continuous discussions with the financial controller? Did you have discussions with the financial controller?”
Conlon: “Not about this, no.”
Later
O’Donnell: “I’d ask you to reflect Mr Conlon, on what I’ve asked you is: do you think it’s credible that you were not aware of these payments? Do you think it’s credible?”
Conlon: “Well I’m telling you the truth, I was not aware of these payments going through, absolutely not. I was the new CEO, lots of things were happening, I was finding my feet. I had a serious issue with regards to the appointment of the HSE and I had a serious issue on my hands with CRC Medical Devices.”
O’Donnell: “Side by side with that then, you had CRC Medical Devices, where it was, what was the amount owed from CRC Medical Devices to CRC Friends and Supporters at that particular time? What was the amount owed?”
Conlon: “There was no amount owed because there was no money transferred from Friends of…”
O’Donnell: “There was a loan from Friends and Supporters to CRC Medical.”
Conlon: “There wasn’t, there was an underwriting of a loan. The monies owed were owed to the CRC, they fund it.”
O’Donnell: “So who funded the CRC Medical?”
Conlon: “In the main, the funding came from the CRC.”
O’Donnell: “But you have written in your own notes here, a loan of €550,000, from your presentation today, from the Friends and Supporters of the CRC was approved for the venture.”
Conlon: “The loan was approved but the money was never drawn down. What happened was the working capital exposure over the years was covered by CRC. CRC was owed the money by Friends but that transaction never took place.”
O’Donnell: “But the money that was spent by the CRC Medical, where did that money come from? Where was the physical, the €550,000?”
Conlon: “That money was never, never transferred to CRC Medical Devices. It was underwritten.”
O’Donnell: “And where did CRC Medical Devices get their money from?”
Conlon: “From the CRC.”
O’Donnell: “And where did the CRC? So, so, what you said there, there was a loan of €550,000 from Friends and Supporters…”
Conlon: “It was approved but never drawn down..”
O’Donnell: “…was approved for the venture but that’s not what your, your presentation does not qualify that. It says…”
Conlon: “But I qualified that for Deputy [Shane] Ross about 15 minutes ago.”
O’Donnell: “So what you’re basically saying is that €550,000 was put down from CRC to CRC Medical, that loan was effectively underwritten by the Friends and Supporters, OK.”
Conlon: “It was working capital support, more so than a loan.”
O’Donnell: “What is now the loss, on the sale of CRC Medical to MMS [Munster Medical Supplies], what’s the eventual, what would be the loss to CRC?”
Conlon: “The maximum loss would be €200,000. I would hope that it would be around €100,000.”
O’Donnell: “But you won’t know that. What’s the potential loss, €200,000?”
Conlon: “€200,000.”
O’Donnell: “Who’ll end up taking that hit?”
Conlon: “The Friends and Supporters.”
O’Donnell: “Ok, so the point I’m trying to make is that between the €200,000 from there, and there’s €700,000 in terms of the divvy-up, the bonanza for Mr Kiely, it’s over €1million of money that was collected by ordinary people, up and down the country. How do you feel about that?”
Conlon: “Well I must stress again that I was not aware of Paul Kiely’s pension arrangements. Those pension arrangements were made by the renumeration committee of the CRC, of which I was not a member and I’d no hand, act nor part to play. In relation to the CRC Medical Devices, I think quite the opposite. I rescued a potential loss of €600,000 by my actions over the last, over the four months or the five months that I was there.”
O’Donnell: “You were on the board for eight years, prior to that date?”
Conlon: “The board of CRC? Yeah.”
O’Donnell: “Yeah. Did the issue in terms of CRC Medical, did that come up for discussion at any time?”
Conlon: “Only more, towards the end, from about April, May onwards.”
O’Donnell: “April, May of what year?”
Conlon: “2013.”
O’Donnell: “So you’re saying to me, this thing was haemoraghing money and it never came up for discussion at the CRC board?”
Conlon: “Only briefly, a number of rescue plans were put in by the management, they didn’t work and it wasn’t really until I got to grips with it, when I was appointed CEO.”
Ex-CRC chief Kiely received €700,000 retirement package (Irish Times)
Watch live here in Committee Room 1
Spotted in a shop window yesterday.
(Thanks Anon)
[CRC Director, David Martin (left) Chairman of the CRC James Nugent (centre behind) and Former CEO Paul Kiely (right) at Leinster House, Kildare Street, Dublin, after appearing before the Public Accounts Committee on Wednesday}.
Board of Central Remedial Clinic has resigned with immediate effect.
— Sarah Bardon (@SarahBardon) December 13, 2013
Rehab next?.
Earlier: The CRC Effect
meanwhile…
By Annie West
[Journalist Tom Clonan, whose son is a patient of the Central Remedial Clinic]
Show you care.
Let him bare.
“I have four children, one of my boys [age 11] has a serious neuro-muscular disease and has attended the CRC for the last ten years. So for the last ten years we’ would have maybe three or four appointments in the CRC per week – physio, occupational therapy – and I know that there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands who are in a similar situation, who are carers of children who are disabled, or family members who are disabled. And the effect of this so-called controversy on the CRC has been devastating.
“You know, we deal with people, over the last decade, who put their hands on the limbs of our children, they provide a place of safety for us, they replace fear with hope. It’s because of the staff at the CRC, the therapists, the occupational therapists, the doctors, the neurologists, the paediatricians, the electro neurologists, the surgeons – and fortunately, I know them all.
“They are the reason that people like me can sleep at night. They have been very badly damaged by this tactical leak wich… and this story about the top-ups is purely a distraction from the damage that James Reilly is doing, and this government is doing, to our health services, and to front-line services – not just in the CRC, but across the public health system, and it’s an absolute disgrace.”“…the CRC board, like many boards are full of political appointees, and we still have a political culture that appoints their own. So for Fine Gael and Labour…… and I saw Brendan Howlin express surprise at this issue – they still operate the same culture, there’s been no change since this government took office. We were promised new politics – we certainly haven’t got that.
“But I have to say that the staff in the CRC are as bewildered by this so-called controversy as are the service users and the clients, and they, and the other charities are the ones who are paying the price. And there needs to be a context put on this so that charities and institutions like the CRC don’t continue to suffer in this way.
“I think journalists need to put a context on this and ask the question, ‘Why was this information released to the Public Accounts Committee a week or two weeks after the chief executives of the voluntary hospitals put it up to James Reilly as being dangerous to patient safety?’ – and that’s what this is about, a smoke-screen for James Reilly’s absolutely disgraceful stewardship of the HSE.”
Tom Clonan on RTE’s Prime Time, Tuesday night.
Earlier: All De Bertie’s Men
(James Horan/Photocall Ireland)
[Form top Paul Kiely, Jim Nugent and Des Peelo]
Shane Ross went on the Last Word with Matt Cooper on Today FM last night to discuss the latest revelations about the Central Remediel Clinic. He spoke of the senior CRC management and their links to former taoiseach Bertie Ahern
Matt Cooper: “Jim Nugent,… the Chairman and Acting Chief Executive of the CRC, Director at the Central Bank in the boom years, regular donor to Bertie Ahern at the Clontarf Castle and other functions over the years. One of Bertie’s ‘dig-out’ men as well – and now he’s disclosing this?”
Shane Ross: “Well, yeah and also he was director of [state-run tourism training body] Cert…”
Matt Cooper: I forgot about the loans he owes to Danske Bank!”
Shane Ross: “That’s right…”
Matt Cooper: “It was all over the Irish Independent today, what was it, about €9 million?”
Shane Ross: “Yes, €9 million owed to Danske Bank as well – I mean this is an extraordinary man, I asked them [members of the CRC at the PAC meeting] towards the end today, about the link to Bertie Ahern and they all kind of looked at me as if I had two heads, at the idea, that really they could all be there because they had links to Bertie – which is something that apparently had never occurred to them.
But, I mean, you have the most extraordinary coincidence, if nothing else – I don’t believe it is a coincidence, where you have Mr. Nugent who was appointed to Cert under Bertie Ahern’s government, he was appointed to the board of the Central Bank under Bertie Ahern, you have Paul Kiely who was appointed to the CIE board under Bertie Ahern.
“You have Des Peelo, who wasn’t there today, but he was former chairman, who was a good friend of Bertie Ahern’s representative at the tribunal, you have Tony Kent, the Late Tony Kent who was a senior member of the Central Remedial Clinic, who was in the Senate and who was a great friend of Bertie Ahern’s – and you also have Vincent Brady, who wasn’t there today, who was in the cabinet with Bertie Ahern. All, at some stage were on the board of the CRC. Now, they just kind of shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘no, no, no’, and protested that they were all very talented in their own rights, but it was a pretty unconvincing kind of scenario. They were all, you know, pals of Bertie, one way or another – linked to him, one way or another.”
{Later]
Shane Ross: “….You know, can I just add one thing about the pension pot, which is absolutely extraordinary – the money transferred, over €3 million which goes into this pension pot out of which Mr. Kiely is drawing, but what emerged today was that he’s not getting a pension on the basis of his €106,900, which is what the…”
Matt Cooper: “… Ah, let me guess – it’s on the basis of his top-up as well, is it?”
Shane Ross: “On the basis of his top-up.”
Matt Cooper: “So, he gets the HSE funded salary, he gets a top-up on top of it for all these years that… and then…”
Shane Ross: “And then..”
Matt Cooper: “And then he gets the pension based on the gross amount?”
Gavan Reilly: “The HSE salary was just short of 107,000, and I think the privately sourced bit of it was about another 117,000 – so his net salary was somewhere in the region of about 220,000.”
Matt Cooper: “So, what’s he getting as a pension now?”
Shane Ross: “The pension is higher, it’s higher than his basic salary from the HSE.”
Matt Cooper: “You’re joking?”
Shane Ross: “I’m not, Im actually not.”
Matt Cooper: “That’s typical – but I thought this sort of thing was supposed to be ended when this country went bust a few years ago?”
Shane Ross: “Well, for some people, it didn’t end and for some people, there were no pay cuts. But there are losers here, and Mr. Nugent said today, rather ironically, he said, ‘there are no winners in this situation.’. There are! Mr. Reilly is a winner, there are other winners at the top of the CRC, but there are losers. The disabled people are losers, the staff who aren’t very well paid, are losers. But there certain, there are one or two winners, which is what’s been happening in Ireland today has been happening over the past five or six years.”
Matt Cooper: “Shane, Isn’t the Mater Hospital where Bertie learnt his accountancy?”
Shane Ross: “Yeah, that’s absolutely right.”
Matt Cooper: “He didn’t qualify as an accountant, but he learnt his accountancy up there?”
Shane Ross: “Bertie Ahern came from that stable. Mr. Kiely said today that he didn’t come from that stable, but certainly Mr. [Brian] Conlon came from that stable, there’s another member of the board, whom I think comes from that stable as well. There’s an extraordinary coincidence – and no-one answered the question, but we’ll come back to it – there are extraordinary formal links between the Mater and the CRC, which I don’t really understand.”
Listen here
Previously: Mr10 Per Cent
(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)
[Paul Kiely, former chief executive of the Central Remedial Clinic whose €200,000 pension pay off was revealed at the Public Accounts Committee meeting today followed by CRC chairman Jim Jim Nugent]
Chairman of the CRC Jim Nugent told the committee that the organisation was contractually bound to pay salaries that were in excess of HSE levels. He said the CRC had presented these arrangements at a meeting in July 2009. David Martin, a director who was at that meeting with another former CEO, Des Peelo, said the HSE agreed that the CRC was to pay the shortfall to those with “legacy contracts”, who had been receiving pay in excess of HSE levels.
.@MaryERegan points out: Paul Kiely’s €200k pension lump sum is about 10% of *all* donations to the CRC’s charity fundraising arm last year
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 11, 2013
‘The Santa Bear Appeal has so far raised e1million for #CRC‘ Unfortunately they spent 3 times that on top-ups and pensions for board members
— Aidan Ellis (@ellisaidan) December 11, 2013
Another can of worms opened in health services: Shane Ross reveals CRC is paying Mater 669,000 a year to administer phantom pension scheme
— Mary Regan (@MaryERegan) December 11, 2013
Former CRC Chief Executive received €200,000 pension payout (RTE)
Earlier: The Good Charities Guide
Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland