Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last week the RTE "Prime Time" programme did a great public service in setting out a tale of truly outlandish spending by the charity Console on the part of its founder and his family.

The story is amazing but not unique. Sadly, we have been down this road previously with other charitable entities. The programme told a story of irregularities in finances, of altering accounts, and of how benefits were extracted. It was reported that the charity's founder, Mr. Paul Kelly, his wife, Patricia, and indeed their son used 11 credit cards over a two-year period to shell out almost €500,000 of the charity's funds to fund their lavish lifestyle. That is truly shocking and despicable. Money was used for trips to Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, designer clothes by Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren, tickets for the Rugby World Cup, dental work, groceries, restaurants and consultancy payments at an extraordinary level. This has left those who work for Console and those who avail of its services not just shocked but angry and traumatised by these revelations.

I am sure the Minister will be as shocked as the rest of us by this turn of events. His claim that all this emerged because of exacting scrutiny by the HSE needs to be considered. I suggest all this is evidence of a lack of scrutiny and a lack of accountability. As I understand it, the flag of concern was first raised by the National Office for Suicide Prevention as far back as 2009 and the question has to be asked, once the flag was raised, why this was allowed to continue.

Will the Minister join me in calling on the HSE to make available immediately to the Committee of Public Accounts a copy of its audit report and the service level agreements with Console? Will he also join me in insisting that the HSE presents itself before the committee next week? This issue, this story and this scandal cannot be allowed to fester. I appreciate other agencies have tasks to fulfil in investigation but the buck stops with us, and the turning of over stones in the previous Dáil was largely done by the Committee of Public Accounts. It is entirely appropriately that the HSE be called and that its officials present themselves, and it is absolutely necessary that the Government insists that this happen immediately, with the committee meeting next week to deal with this.

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