To be fair to the retired accountant in question – Donal O’Connor, formerly of Pricewaterhouse Coopers until he retired in 2008 – he did point out that he had gifted a 17% discount on his usual €580-per-hour rate and only charged the State €480-per-hour for 201 hours – equating to 25 days at 8 hours per day – for his work in 2011 as an administrator to a company called Icarom, which was formerly known as Insurance Corporation of Ireland PLC, a failed AIB insurance business bailed out by the State in 1985.
The €96,480 fees for 2011 claimed by Donal were part of an overall total of €291,000 of administration fees for 2011 which were previously agreed by the Central Bank of Ireland and submitted to the High Court in Dublin for approval.
And just to heighten the farce, one of the second highest remunerated judges in Europe, couldn’t even stomach the €480-per-hour demand from a retired accountant and reduced it to €360-per-hour, thereby saving the State €24,000 and giving Donal only €72,000 for 25 days work. The judge also reduced by 25% the remaining €162,000 being charged by PwC for the provision of junior staff to assist Donal. All-in-all, the State saved €65,000 for 2011 and over €50,000 for 2010, from the judge’s intervention. The matter is reported by Mary Carolan in the Irish Times today and deals with a court hearing yesterday where the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns was examining the finances of the 27-year old administration.
And by the way, PwC is the company being sued by the administrators of Quinn Insurance for alleged failings in signing off the accounts of Sean Quinn’s former company, which may cost us €1.6bn which we will be paying via a 2% levy on most insurance policies for more than a decade.
Of course we shouldn’t be surprised that what was acceptable to the Central Bank of Ireland – which previously approved the administration fees examined by the judge yesterday – was not acceptable elsewhere. The CBI has different standards. We learned during the week that the CBI paid five employees more than €200,000 per annum and the Government has decided it cannot ask for any waiver on those salaries, though to be fair to Governor Honohan, he has unilaterally sacrificed much more than the 15% asked of from other State employees earning more than €200,000. And in fact it seems Governor Honohan is earning 40% less than at least one of his underlings.
With 309,000 unemployed as part of the 430,000 in receipt of all unemployment-related benefits on the Live Register, with 240 people emigrating per day, with the State running a 8.5% annual deficit equating to €13bn, with debt:GDP approaching 120% and debt:GNP approaching 150%, with the country in an IMF programme, you really need to stand back to admire this circus.
Unfortunately this will not be the last time we hear of this behavior.
I don’t have a problem with high salaries, provided the level of responsibility in the job demands it.
I do have a problem where high salaries are paid, but when things do go wrong, no responsibility is taken.
But then again, in the land of Zero Accountability this behavior is normal.
Bearing in mind the performance of the Irish soccer team last night, let’s not forget that the man ultimately responsible is FAI chief John Delaney.
This man is paid more than his Spanish & Italian counterparts combined!
Adding this to the case outlined by NWL above, I’d like to propose that some arts organisation mark this great Irish culture during The Gathering in 2013.
Reblogged this on Awaken Longford and commented:
Shocking….. Public Trustee’s they couldn’t run around the block, this idiot O’Connor should be pursued for return of this outrageous theft of public money and the official resposible for sanctioning the payment should be fired!!!
This of course is the same Donal O’Connor who made a mess of the DDDA and then was promoted to Anglo…
@Neil, thank you, I was trying to confirm it was the same former interim chairman of Anglo (betwixt Sean Fiztpatrick and Alan Dukes) whose record was execrable because it was at least nine months after his departure that the full scale of loan losses became known.
Somebody in this country this it is perfectly of to pay somebody €480/hr to shut down a bankrupt subsidiary of a bankrupt bank in a bankrupt State.
O’Connor did not get to the top of PWC without neck. He has clearly lost none of that neck.
This country is being ripped off by cartels of vultures; ripped off with the full imprimatur of its elected representatives.
Typo:
First line should read
Somebody in this country thinks it is perfectly ok to pay somebody
The elite look after each other at the expense of the ordinary worker. We should all stop working
Personalities aside, the fact that this level of cost is tolerated is the problem.
€580.00 per hour.
No one is worth that level of remuneration from the public purse.
(I’d argue that a private company wouldn’t be paying this rate to employees/contractors).
There is a class of people who are feasting on the carcass of this country. Their cup overfloweth.
Is there a possibility that the fees were not actually unreasonable, given the apparent depth of Mr. O’Connor’s creative and imaginative skills?
I mean, not everyone can make all those unlikely numbers add up. It’s a skill that was, I guess, hugely valuable when the chips were falling.