Gardaí raid home of ex-education chief

Fraud squad move follows a damning report from C&AG

THE Garda fraud squad has raided the home of the former head of the controversial education board that splurged more than €60,000 on hotels in one year.

That included more than €20,000 at the exclusive K Club, where he hosted staff meetings.

Seán Ashe retired from his role as chief executive of the Kildare Wicklow Education Training Board (KWETB) in December 2017, having been in the post, which oversees a budget of €160m, since June 2013.

Earlier this week, gardaí from the fraud squad attended his home as well as the offices of the KWETB as a damning Comptroller and Auditor General report was published backing up the details that the Irish Mail on Sunday has been reporting since last year.

‘Hard-drives and laptops were seized at the offices,’ a source told the MoS. ‘All the staff were in the office and the fraud squad arrived mid-morning. The staff were told to leave the building.’

The KWETB has been the subject of a series of investigations into lavish spending on hotels as well as the awarding of contracts to firms with family ties to Mr Ashe, which he repeatedly failed to declare.

The MoS broke the story in January 2018 that the fraud squad had been called in to investigate the KWETB following an inquiry by the Department of Education and subsequently reported that companies with family ties to Mr Ashe had received lucrative contracts from the KWETB as well as receiving the use of an industrial property, with no trace of payment for the property found.

The MoS revealed in April 2018 that the C&AG was investigating the education board and that €60,000 had been spent on hotels for meetings and training events.

The MoS also revealed that two companies associated with family members of Mr Ashe had received lucrative contracts from the KWETB, with Mr Ashe failing to disclose the conflict of interest.

When questioned by investigators about his family ties to the companies, he acknowledged that his son and daughter-in-law were employees of one company involved, Postbrook. But he insisted they were not beneficiaries – despite the fact that they were both also shareholders and his daughter-in-law was also a director of the company.

Another company, Erris Contracts, of which Mr Ashe’s cousin was a director, also won contracts without the correct tendering process. The reported noted that when the audit committee queried why the K-Club had been selected, ‘no supporting material was provided in relation to how the hotel was procured, and the invoice provided contained very little detail’.

The K-Club was also selected without competitive tendering.

The C&AG report found that there was either incomplete or missing paperwork to verify that procurements were carried out according to the law. Where there was paperwork, the C&AG found that ‘some contracts were awarded where it appeared from the documentation that the successful bidder failed to meet certain required minimum standards’.

Independent Councillor for Kildare, Fiona McLoughlin Healy, who is on the board of the KWETB and one of the members of its audit committee who led calls for an investigation into governance and procurement issues, said: ‘It must be particularly galling to parents of children who have to raise funds for books, trips and schools across Kildare and Wicklow to read about management of the KWETB spending €10,000 on the K-Club for a two-day conference or that no money was paid to the KWETB in 2015 for an industrial unit which it had rented to a company associated with the former chief executive’s son.’

The Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee is scheduled to examine the report next Thursday.

Mr Ashe had previously said he would attend the committee once the C&AG report was concluded. But the MoS has learned that due to the ongoing Garda investigation he has not been invited to attend. Mr Ashe did not reply to requests for comment from the MoS this week.

A KWETB spokesman said: ‘KWETB accepts the findings of the C&AG Report and is committed to addressing the issues identified.’

‘Hard-drives and laptops were seized’