A sitting Senator accused of “blackmailing” a former chief executive of a State agency to stop a fraud investigation should come forward and co-operate with an ongoing Garda investigation, Sinn Féin has said.
The chairman of the Dáil Committee of Public Accounts, Sinn Féin TD John Brady, said on Wednesday that the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau was investigating allegations contained in an unsigned letter sent to members in February concerning an unnamed State agency.
Brady did not identify the agency, but it is understood to refer to correspondence that set out allegations about corporate governance and potential criminal issues at the State fisheries agency, Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI).
Several weeks ago, the committee referred the correspondence to gardaí under section 19 of the Criminal Justice Act, which essentially requires anyone with information about a potential criminal offence to provide details to gardaí.
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The unsigned letter sent to the committee was purported to have been written by someone close to the board of IFI.
“The details shared were of the most serious nature, including alleged instances of theft, fraud and the destruction of evidence,” Brady told The Irish Times.
“Of deep concern also were allegations that a sitting Senator blackmailed the former ceo [chief executive] to stop a fraud investigation. Given the seriousness of this information, I took the decision to refer these matters to An Garda Síochána.”
Brady said this Garda investigation is now under way.
“I would urge the Senator and anyone else with information to come forward and co-operate with this investigation in full,” he said.
It is understood that gardaí have told the committee that, given the seriousness of the complaints, the allegations had been sent to the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau for investigation.
Allegations regarding a serving Senator and IFI were made publicly at a hearing at the Workplace Relations Committee in March.
At the hearing, former IFI chief executive Francis O’Donnell said he had told gardaí four years ago he was being blackmailed by a Senator.
The identity of the Senator was not made known at the public hearing.
O’Donnell told the Workplace Relations Commission he had been threatened by a former board member of the agency after he suspended a relative of that board member as part of an investigation into the alleged misuse of an official fuel card and a vehicle owned by the organisation.
O’Donnell also said subsequently the Department of Environment, under whose aegis IFI falls, had received a protected disclosure setting out allegations against him as chief executive.
He said he told gardaí in the summer of 2022 that allegations made against him in the protected disclosure were being used by a Senator to have the individual, who had been suspended pending an investigation, reinstated to his role.
The former chief executive also said he had been informed by a senior official in the department that a Senator had called him to say that if the person concerned was not reinstated, details in the protected disclosure would be made public.
“I advised gardaí that I was being blackmailed by a Senator at that time,” he said.
O’Donnell maintained the Senator had told another senior official in the department that he, O’Donnell, had links to the Continuity IRA.
