Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 23 May 2000

Vol. 519 No. 5

Written Answers. - Consultancy Contracts.

Alan Shatter

Question:

148 Mr. Shatter asked the Minister for Finance the moneys paid by the State to a person (details supplied), whether as an employee of the State or for consultancy and or public relations work undertaken by him on behalf of any Minister and or Government Department in the period 1977 to 2000; the nature of the work undertaken; the subject matter; and the moneys paid. [14201/00]

Minister for Finance (Mr McCreevy):

In so far as the scope of my reply is concerned, I can only answer for payments made by my Department or bodies under the aegis of my Department. The person named was employed in the Department of the Public Service from 14 March 1983 to 20 February 1986 as an assistant secretary – press and information officer – on the maximum of the assistant secretary scale. The annual salary at the maximum of the assistant secretary salary scale for the relevant period was as follows:

14/3/83-31/8/83	£24,090 per annum
1/9/83-31/1/84	£25,234 per annum
1/2/84-31/12/84	£26,054 per annum
1/1/85-30/6/85	£26,836 per annum
1/7/85-20/2/86	£27,641 per annum.

Unfortunately, due to the lapse of time, it has not been possible to ascertain details of payments other than salary which may have been made to the person named, for example, travel and subsistence, if any, in the course of his employment with the Department of the Public Service.

As far as consultancy-public relations work is concerned, my Department has no record of any contracts or payments of that nature to the person concerned or to his company. However I have been advised that a number of such contracts were placed by the National Treasury Management Agency, which has supplied me with the information set out below.

For the sake of completeness, I also asked the following agencies, which operate under the aegis of my Department, viz. the Office of Public Works, the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Civil Service Commission, the Valuation Office and the State Laboratory, to provide me with any information relevant to the Deputy's question.

The National Treasury Management Agency directly engaged the company concerned in relation to the following projects:

Date Paid	Service Received	Amount Paid IR£
26/8/92	Annual Report 1991	42,791
19/11/92	Annual Report 1991	339
4/3/93	End Year Press Release 1992	999
12/8/93	Publicity re 1992 Annual Report	1,483
20/12/93	Production Management Annual Report 1992	1,815
Date Paid	Service Received	Amount Paid IR£
13/1/94	Public Relations – End year Results 1993	1,135
2/3/94	New Issue Savings Certificate	961
16/6/94	Public relations Market Making	1,408
2/11/94	Annual Report 1993	33,157
11/11/94	PR Consultancy 1993 Annual Report Launch	1,990
8/12/94	Annual Report – Envelopes	907
18/1/95	PR End Year Press Release 1994	917
10/4/95	New Maximum Holding Savings Certs & Bonds	10,884
6/3/96	Advertising Small Savings	11,046
26/4/96	Advertising Small Savings	26,741
12/7/96	Advertising POSB Interest Rate Changes	242
29/5/97	Advertising Small Savings	28,891
29/5/97	Advertising Small Savings	27,373
29/5/97	Advertising Small Savings	786
20/5/98	Advertising Small Savings	32,879

I understand from the NTMA that tax clearance requirements were complied with in all cases. It should be noted that many of the above amounts include payments by the company concerned to third parties for services such as printing and press advertisements.

I have been advised that the Civil Service Commission, the Valuation Office, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Office of Public Works and the State Laboratory placed no contracts with the company concerned. The Office of the Revenue Commissioners has advised me that records of contract payments together with the identities of recipients are held on its financial management system. The original computerised system was introduced in 1992 and only holds records from that year. There is no record of any payment being made to the company concerned since 1992 under any contract. However an individual Revenue official has a recollection of attending a communications course in 1987 or 1988 which was presented by the individual identified with the company concerned. All manual records of payments prior to 1992 have been destroyed.