Slush fund restaurant account paid pensions and €220k in redundancy

THE ‘restaurant account’ at the Garda College in Templemore was used to fund pension and redundancy payments.

The February 2017 Interim Audit Report into Financial Procedures in Templemore showed this account was effectively used as a slush fund. A wide variety of cash, much from non-restaurant-related activities, flowed into it while everything from retirement presents to charitable donations was paid out of it. But Mr Barrett’s dossier shows a far more serious outlay. ‘The employees of the College restaurant are paid and taxed by an unlimited entity which purports to be independent. It has acted with quasi independence in that it remits PAYE and has an independent pension scheme (documents unseen by author),’ he writes.

He also uncovered that the College Restaurant paid redundancy payments worth €220,000 to workers in 2008.

It is unclear who made these decisions to commit to paying employees such support from an account that was beyond the control of the State.