The Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) has found that a former board member of the Family Support Agency contravened ethics legislation by double-claiming expenses.
Sipo found Richard Hickey submitted duplicate claims for travelling and subsistence expenses from the Family Support Agency and St Brigid’s Family Resource Centre in Waterford for attendance at the same events over a five-year period.
The report follows an investigation hearing held in January.
“During the period 2008 to May 2013, the individual concerned claimed a total of €51,132 from the Family Support Agency,” the Sipo report reads.
“This examination identified that in relation to claims valued at €43,966 (86 per cent of the total), the claimant apparently claimed expenses from the centre in relation to the same periods and journeys.”
The FSA became part of Tusla (the Child and Family Agency) in January 2014 and was a publicly funded body.
No dispute
Sipo’s report notes that when the FSA became aware of an issue relating to Mr Hickey’s travel and subsistence claims, it decided to carry out an examination.
In his evidence at the hearing in January, Mr Hickey did not dispute that he had double-claimed expenses.
“I suppose in the last few years, when I was working in St Brigid’s, the amount of work I was doing had increased considerably. The amount of time that I was away from home had increased considerably. And I felt that it was probably okay for me to take these expenses in the way that I took them. I accept fully that that’s a totally stupid thing to say and that I shouldn’t have done it. But that is the way I was feeling,” he told the hearing.
“It wasn’t something that I planned and set out to do, it just happened and then it continued. And I felt that once that budget had been approved, once the finances were there to do it and most of those finances have been created by my own work over the years in any event, I felt, I suppose, some justification in doing it,” he said.
It was decided by the board of St Brigid’s that Mr Hickey would pay back €25,000 and retire, and the matter would be concluded.
Mr Hickey retired from the centre in August 2013 and paid the agreed sum.