QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN raised over the level of expenses charged to DDDA credit cards during the tenure of former chief executive Paul Moloney.
Credit card bills racked up by the former boss of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority and other staff members during the mid 2000s were discussed by the Dáil Public Accounts Committee as it met this morning.
Fine Gael TD Eoghan Murphy raised the issue, noting that committee chairman John McGuinness had raised the matter with Moloney during his last appearance before the panel, but that “Mr. Moloney said he did’t recall having a credit card”.
Murphy continued:
“It had been a long meeting. But he subsequently wrote back to us to say that he did have one — that he had forgotten that at the meeting, but he’d be happy to write to us regarding what was in those statements.
“He did have a credit card, and he signed for it every month, and the notes are kept in quite some detail,” Murphy said.
“I was wondering if we could write to him to request information about certain things.
“If you go down through the detail of the credit card statements what you see is a lot of travel, a lot of hotel expenses certainly.
“But you also see food being expensed as well as entertainment and things like that. For example, you can see significant amounts being spent in places like Lillie’s Bordello and the Town Bar and Grill for their Christmas parties: that was around €3,600 in total— that was in 2005.“In fairness when you come to 2008, you see €331 being spent instead.
Murphy also referred to a second board member’s credit card which had been used to expense thousands more in drinks bills, including €1,4000 for one staff occasion in ‘Ely’.
“What we see is a lot of expenses and I was surprised because Mr Moloney couldn’t recall whether he had a credit card,” Murphy said.
The committee was later informed by by the PAC clerk that the former chief executive had been forwarded the statements and was currently going through them.
Fine Gael TD Kieran O’Donnell, who chaired today’s meeting, said they would wait to hear back from Moloney before pursuing the matter further.
Ex-DDDA boss Paul Moloney pictured in 2007. [Photocall Ireland]
PAC Chairman John McGuinness asked Moloney several times to explain the bills during his last appearance at the committee in December.
Details of the statements were originally released to the Irish Independent under Freedom of Information legislation.
Moloney had told the committee that he was “shocked” at the details contained in the statements, and said that he would reply to the members in due course.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say