Still no sign of Aras €317k breakdown
PRESIDENT Michael D Higgins has missed his deadline to publish detailed accounts of his controversial €317,000 personal fund.
It is 61 days since he promised an end-of-term statement in November detailing the spending from his unaudited €317,000-a-year allowance, worth €2.2m over seven years. The Áras spending issue dominated all the debates and most of Mr Higgins’s interaction with journalists before the election.
It was revealed at the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee that the President has an annual allowance of €317,000 that is audited.
The President then launched his campaign promising he would issue a ‘formal’ statement of expenditure from the account. The following week, after his opponents challenged his non-specific answers to the Irish Mail on Sunday about his allowance, he pledged to publish details in November.
On October 2 he said: ‘At the end of the period – I’ll say in the month of November – we’ll make a full return on how everything that is spent is receipted.’
He added: ‘And I’ve no problem whatsoever of when at the end of the period – my predecessor for example, after 14 years, returned I think it was €457,000 to the Exchequer.’ He added: ‘I don’t intend to wait until the end of the second term... I will be sending the balance straight back to the Exchequer, and every euro will be accounted for.’
Asked why this couldn’t be done before the end of the campaign, he said: ‘I doubt if it could be done in that amount of time.
‘But let me say, every month every single penny that is spent is balanced on a monthly basis. And we will in fact put an end-of-term statement in place.’ As the selfimposed deadline passed this week, the MoS contacted the Áras on Friday to see when the public could expect to see details.
A spokesperson for the President declined to give a specific date but said that priority has been given to an enhanced audit process including the establishment of an audit committee. They said the new arrangements would be in place ‘in the near future’. Despite committing to a November date on the campaign trail when he first addressed the issue, the President later turned to more flexible language, seemingly abandoning any commitment to a specific date. He told Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ Radio a week before the election that he now planned for a comment from the independent audit committee to be included in an annual report on the activities of the Áras.
He said there would be a continuous audit, three or four times a year. During the campaign it emerged the Department of the Taoiseach, which funds the Áras budget, failed to replace the chair of an audit committee that oversees the fund.
‘We’ll make a full return on everything spent’