A state agency funded an angling club that did not exist, had a fleet of uninsured vehicles on the road and leased a lavish historic home to an employee without any financial records, a whistleblower has claimed.
The Irish Daily Mail has obtained a dossier of claims by a board member of Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) that was sent to Environment Minister Eamon Ryan last week.
The board member claimed that there was an ‘acceptance last year that protection crews in certain coastal areas did not do any work’.
This, they say, resulted in the need to mobilise a mobile response unit ‘at considerable cost’.
Mr Ryan has appointed a barrister to review the IFI after the dossier indicated to the minister that ‘the functions of Inland Fisheries Ireland are not being performed in an effective manner’.
The allegations include the leasing of a nine-bedroom Victorian home, Aasleagh Lodge, which overlooks Killary Harbour in Co Mayo to a staff member, who turned it into a guesthouse.
In the Seanad on Thursday, former Minister of State at the Department of Environment Seán Kyne, whose previous remit covered the IFI, said there was no transparency surrounding the lease arrangement.
‘There has been locally arranged leasing of Aasleagh Lodge, which was an IFI property, to a staff member as a guest house with no transparency process or financial accounts,’ he said. In a parliamentary question in May 2018, Mr Kyne, then Minister of State at the Department of Environment, said that the...
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