THE PRE-HOSPITAL EMERGENCY Care Council paid out €203,000 in fees over the course of five years to an external consultant chairing its audit committee for a separate, part-time role as secretary to the organisation.

Over the same five-year period, the same external consultant also received payments totalling over €32,000 to act as audit committee chair at the agency, which regulates paramedics.

The audit committee monitors an organisation’s financial controls and corporate governance, among other responsibilities.

The fees for the audit committee chair role – which exceeded €10,000 per year in 2018 and 2019, and exceeded €6,000 in 2021 – were described as ”significantly in excess of what is normal for such responsibilities” by the Comptroller & Auditor General, the state’s spending watchdog, in a 2022 report to the Oireachtas on the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council’s (PHECC) 2021 financial statement.

The excessive payments “had not been sanctioned by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform”, the C&AG added.

In reports to the Oireachtas on the PHECC’s financial statements for 2019, 2020 and 2021, the C&AG noted that the PHECC had acknowledged the “potential for conflicts arising from the same person acting in both roles”.

In a 2019 note to the 2018 financial statements the PHECC stated that having the same person employed in these two capacities had “clear advantages in terms of continuity and corporate knowledge” but it was “not an ideal situation and possible potential conflicts have been identified” so the provision of these services would be reconsidered at the end of 2020.

However, the situation was not resolved until 2022, according to the PHECC’s latest financial statements, published earlier this year.

Niamh Brennan, Professor of Management in UCD and director of the university’s centre for corporate governance, said it was problematic for one person to hold both a non-executive directorship, such as audit chair, and an executive role such as secretary due to the conflict of interest risk. 

She added that it was something you would “never” normally see. The chair of an organisation’s audit committee should be a wholly independent non-executive director, Brennan said.

“If you’re also holding an executive role, how can you oversee yourself?” she said.

The consultant who held the two roles was Con Foley, a qualified accountant. Mr Foley is no longer working for the PHECC and it is understood that he has retired. The Journal has made efforts to contact him but he has not responded over the past two weeks.

The PHECC told The Journal that Mr Foley had recused himself from PHECC business that “concerned either the role of the secretary or the role of the chair of compliance and audit committee and at no time were any actual or potential conflicts identified”.

The director of the PHECC, Richard Lodge, and the chair of the board, Jacqueline Burke, who signed off on the arrangements from 2018 onwards, are still in charge of the organisation.

Payments of between €28,000 and €51,000 per year were made between 2018 and 2022 to Mr Foley for the part-time secretarial position at the PHECC. 

The C&AG said in its December 2022 report to the Oireachtas that that the Department of Public Expenditure had “imposed a maximum fee of €2,400 per annum for the [audit] committee chairperson role” in December 2021. A new chair was appointed in April 2022.

PHECC responds

The PHECC said in a statement that it had appointed an external consultant to the roles of audit committee chair and secretary because it was required by law to ensure these roles were held by individuals with the necessary skills and experience, which were not available within the board.

The PHECC said it had itself recognised the opportunity for “possible conflicts of interest”. 

It said the matter had been “resolved to the satisfaction of the C&AG”, with the spending watchdog’s recommendations “fully implemented” 18 months ago.

A new audit chair and a separate new secretary have been appointed and are being remunerated “in line with Department of Public Expenditure and Reform-sanctioned rates”.

Department of Health responds

The PHECC is under the aegis of the Department of Health, which said that it operates “robust governance and oversight” of the agency.

It acknowledged the issues raised by the C&AG in the course of its audit reports, and noted the recent appointments of two different individuals to the roles in question at the PHECC at levels of remuneration in line with government guidelines.