TDs quizzing Kerins at the PAC ‘lacked discipline’
ANGELA Kerins was forced to intervene to counteract a lack of ‘discipline’ by TDs who questioned her at the Public Accounts Committee about her €240,000 salary, her lawyers have claimed.
The former Rehab charity chief yesterday continued with her ‘unprecedented’ Supreme Court challenge to the right of the Dáil watchdog to have asked her detailed questions about her pay and conditions at a public hearing in February 2014.
Ms Kerins, 58, was forced to ‘assert [her own] privacy’ at the hearing, her barrister John Rogers SC told the court. Referring to a transcript of the PAC hearing, he said there was an attempt to turn Ms Kerins ‘into a public servant’ and accountable to the PAC. However, Mr Rogers argued, ‘citizens have no accountability to the PAC’.
Ms Kerins complained that she was asked questions ‘for hours’ about her salary, having agreed to reveal how much she earned, the court heard. And when asked about it, she again had to step in to ‘set down markers’, Mr Rogers argued.
She told the committee that she worked for a non-profit company and that she wasn’t paid by taxpayers, the court heard. Mr Rogers explained: ‘That’s a statement seeking to limit the reach of the examination that’s ensuing.’
Ms Kerins’s lawyers also pointed to TDs asking her to account for an increase of €6,000 in her salary ‘at a time of cutbacks’, and Mr Rogers told the court that she was ‘tested on her bonus’.
Ms Kerins had told the inquiry that she ‘waived’ her entitlement to a bonus.
Mr Rogers told the court: ‘You have an intrusion into the absolutely private workings of Rehab.’
Ms Kerins was asked questions that she hadn’t expected, based on a letter she had received from the PAC in advance of the hearing, the court has heard.
Lawyers for the PAC argue that the watchdog was legitimately investigating issues of money spent by the State and ‘whether the State is getting value for that money’.
Paul Gallagher SC, the committee’s lead counsel, yesterday told seven senior judges: ‘To imply there is some liability because someone asked a question they weren’t notified of in advance – it would be impossible to run a committee.’
The PAC’s lawyers also argue that Ms Kerins could simply have ‘walked out’ of the hearing.
The hearing continues today.
‘She had to set down markers’