The Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has “significant concerns” about governance within Inland Fisheries Ireland, its chairman John Brady has told the agency’s parent department.
In a letter to Oonagh Buckley, secretary general at the Department of the Environment, he said “these issues have been ongoing within the IFI for a number of years”.
Mr Brady, of Sinn Féin, said that, “consequently”, the State agency was required to appear before the Dáil committee in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
He told Ms Buckley the committee was seeking a note “detailing at what stage does a Minister or the department intervene when governance issues arise within an organisation”.
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The Irish Times previously reported in December that the Government had decided on a new external examination of the fisheries agency. Minister for the Environment Darragh O’Brien said the examination would take place after a new chief executive was appointed.
Members of the committee are investigating a number of issues involving the agency that were set out in a special report last October by the State’s main auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General. Committee members have criticised the agency’s management over evidence provided at a hearing in December.
The committee is expected to recall the agency to answer additional questions in the new year. It follows a hearing in December where Mr Brady said he had “seldom seen an organisation so ill prepared for an appearance in front of the Public Accounts Committee”.
The agency has faced controversies over recent years, with a number of external reviews and investigations conducted since 2021.
Mr O’Brien said the previous government in May 2022 appointed a senior counsel to carry out an independent review of the organisation.
In February 2023 former minister for the environment Eamon Ryan directed a review of governance at the agency should be conducted by statutory governors he had appointed to carry out the functions of the agency, pending the establishment of a new board, he said.
Mr O’Brien told the Labour Party’s Eoghan Kenny that, between 2021 and 2025, his department had initiated seven investigations by independent external investigators into protected disclosures relating to the agency.
The Minister said six of these investigations were completed and one was still in progress.
In a statement following the committee hearing in early December, Mr Brady said the agency executive revealed that the former chief executive, who went on leave in March 2024, was on full pay until June 2024. “This was then reduced to half pay for a period of three months, but bizarrely, full pay was reinstated from September 2024 to June 2025 until the former CEO officially exited the organisation,” Mr Brady said.
He said “big questions” remained about uninsured vehicles used by the agency, with a particular focus on an employee who was involved in a collision in an uninsured agency vehicle in Donegal in August 2021.
In his subsequent letter to Ms Buckley, Mr Brady said the committee considered its examination into the agency “remains open” and many matters highlighted in the Comptroller and Auditor General’s reports “remain unresolved”.
The committee wanted additional information from the department, he said.
