Inquiry TD denies anti-Siptu bias

SIPTU HAS suggested the chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee John McGuinness may not be impartial in dealing with the ongoing investigations into how more than €5 million in public funds ended up in a bank account controlled by figures associated with the union.

Mr McGuinness has strongly denied he is biased against the union or anybody else in relation to the inquiry into the routing of money from various public sources into an account known as the Siptu National Health and Local Authority Levy Fund.

Siptu has said it knew nothing about this account. Money from the account was used in part to pay for foreign trips undertaken by union officials and senior civil and public servants.

The issue has been the subject of several investigations over the last two years and is still before the Dáil Public Accounts Committee.

In a letter published on the committee’s website, Siptu general secretary Joe O’Flynn highlighted comments attributed to Mr McGuinness in a Sunday newspaper last month.

The newspaper article quoted Mr McGuinness as accusing Siptu of “playing games”, “trying to muddy the waters” and using the committee as a “battleground to point the finger at the HSE”.

Mr O’Flynn said another comment attributed to Mr McGuinness was: “they will not get away with it”.

In a statement in early February, he said Mr McGuinness had also said the Comptroller and Auditor General (who is carrying out another investigation into the issue) should come back to the committee if he was frustrated at any stage in his attempts to get access to full information.

Mr O’Flynn said Siptu had already told the committee it would co-operate fully with the Comptroller.

“I suggest that, in your capacity as chairman of this highly-respected and important Committee, with your consequential responsibility for fair procedure, you might reflect on the position which you have been reported to have adopted to date and which could reasonably be interpreted by any fair-minded person as being prejudicial – especially when the party to which you were reported to have referred ie Siptu, has not yet been given an opportunity to assist your Committee on the matter,” Mr O’Flynn stated.

Mr McGuinness said last night he rejected the allegations made against him.

He said Siptu would receive an even-handed approach when it came before the committee.

In a letter replying to Mr O’Flynn, Mr McGuinness said any comments he made were made out of “frustration that this issue is being dragged out”.

He said there appeared “to be an unwillingness to share information on the way taxpayers’ money was used and that it will now take a further investigation by the Comptroller and Auditor General before the Committee of Public Accounts can get a clear line of sight on how all funds that went through this account, including the €1,154,165.25 that represents payments from the account for which information is not available, were spent”.