MINUTES OF A special meeting of the CRC board of governors detail how it was agreed to give outgoing chief executive Paul Kiely a €742,000 pension and pay-off package – and to keep it confidential – in March of last year.
The minutes have been published on the Public Accounts Committee website today and were discussed at yesterday’s revelatory hearings where Kiely’s retirement package was disclosed.
The meeting took place on 25 March 2013 at 5pm in the Central Remedial Clinic boardroom and present were Hamilton Goulding (son of CRC founder Valerie Goulding), Hassia Jameson, Jim Nugent, Ailbhe Rice-Jones, and Martin Walsh.
Not present were Vincent Brady, Brian Conlan, David Martin and Pat Ryan.
Crucially, the minutes record that chairman Goulding made a presentation “outlining details of a proposed financial settlement which might be offered to Mr Kiely”.
“The board considered that the proposed arrangement was fair both to the CRC and to Mr Kiely and approved the package as presented,” the minutes state.
The minutes state that it was agreed by board members that “the terms of Mr Kiely’s settlement are confidential, and that a legally binding Confidentiality Agreement will be put in place”.
The actual details of the package are not recorded in the minutes but were disclosed by the CRC’s interim administrator John Cregan in this letter to the HSE director general Tony O’Brien that was read out at the PAC yesterday.
A crucial question which arose at yesterday’s hearings, where former chief executive Brian Conlan was quizzed for nearly four hours, was whether, having not been present, he had read the minutes.
He told PAC members that he did not, saying: “I was not privy to Mr Kiely’s pension settlement. That is the truth. I was not part and parcel of the remuneration committee.”
Conlan later added: “I would say that the decisions made by the board to award Mr Kiely [that] level of remuneration in his pension was wrong.”
It’s not clear whether Conlan, who was not giving interviews today, was sent a copy of the minutes or if they would have come across his desk.
That is likely to be an issue the PAC will want clarified.
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