Consultancy firm set up by ‘absentee TD’ Murphy made €60,438 profit
A CONSULTANCY firm set up by “absentee TD” Dara Murphy to handle payments from his Brussels-based job while he continued to earn around €145,000 a year in the Dáil made a profit of over €60,000 last year.
Newly filed accounts for Epecon Limited show the company recorded profits of €60,438 during the 12 months to the end of June 2019 – during which time Mr Murphy was also a Fine Gael TD.
The firm had a cash pile of €128,533 at the end of this period, and had accumulated profits of €86,703 since it was established in September 2017, when the former minister landed a job as campaign director with the European People’s Party (EPP).
Mr Murphy was branded an “absentee TD” by then-opposition leader Micheál Martin after it emerged he had the lowest attendance of all 158 TDs, and had not spoken in the Dáil for almost two years.
The position as campaign director with the EPP for the 2019 European Parliament elections reportedly came with a remuneration package worth €10,000 a month.
Meanwhile, Mr Murphy continued to earn a salary of around €94,000 per annum as a TD, along with an annual allowance of €51,600. He qualified for the maximum level of allowance by attending Leinster House on at least 120 days each year.
During the 12-month period covered by Epecon’s latest accounts, he spoke just once at a committee hearing and asked only two parliamentary questions. He clocked in at the Houses of the Oireachtas on 41 sitting days and 74 non-sitting days.
As the controversy over his dual roles heightened in December 2019, the former European affairs minister resigned from the Dáil and took up a job in the cabinet of Bulgarian European Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, which reportedly came with a salary of €150,000 a year.
However, he left the job after just seven months, moving to another position within the European Commission.
In a statement announcing his resignation from the Dáil, Mr Murphy said he would “of course” co-operate with any statutory procedure that may be initiated.
However, the Dáil’s internal ethics committee said it could not pursue complaints relating to a member once they had resigned after it was asked by Fianna Fáil TD Michael Moynihan to investigate.
The Standards in Public Office Commission also said it cannot investigate concerns relating to former TDs.
Mr Murphy did not respond to a request for comment.