Fermoy MD councillors claim ‘we have nothing to hide’
Local councillors and their expenses came under scrutiny in this week’s ‘RTÉ Investigates’, but voters can rest assured that no-one from the Fermoy Municipal District featured in the show.
The exposé revealed the details of some councillors in the country who were found guilty of submitting overlapping expenses claims, in some cases claiming they were iin two different countries on the same day, and claiming expenses for both.
RTÉ’s report reveals that ‘hundreds’ of councillors failed to comply with the Local Government Act designed to provide transparency about expenses claimed by local representatives. However, some were guilty of the more serious breach of double-claiming expenses for the same trip or overnight stay, or submitting claims to multiple bodies for the same event.
TheAvondhu asked the local councillors of Fermoy Municipal District whether they were contacted by the show, and can report that all politicians featured in this article are clean as a whistle.
Councillors William O’Leary, Kay Dawson, Deirdre O’Brien, Frank Roche and Noel McCarthy all confirmed to TheAvondhu
that they had not been contacted by anyone connected with the show. Cllr Frank O’Flynn was unable to be contacted at the time of going to press.
SHOWING US ALL ‘IN A BAD LIGHT’
Cllr Noel McCarthy added that the perpetrators highlighted in the show had the potential to paint councillors in a bad light, when they were not representative of the group as a whole.
“I was a bit stunned that some people could vouch to be in two places at once. It was a small number did the wrong thing, but they are not representing all the people who do good work for their constituents. I got to conferences, and I put in my receipts correctly, as I’m sure all my colleagues here do. It shows us all up in a bad light, which we’re not.”
Cllr Frank Roche stressed that he, like most councillors, do the job not for the money, but for the cause and the community.
“I get calls from all over the country, late at night, and they’re people with problems to be solved and that’s what the job is. Any of us wouldn’t survive on the council wages, and that’s not why you would do this work. It’s to help people, and listen to what’s concerning them, and try and fix what you can.”