Monday 5 June 2017

ST JOHN OF GOD MONEY SCANDAL



St John of God made secret payments of C6.24m to managers

State funding of more than ¤500m received in recent years

Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God 

The Hospitaller Order of Saint John of God is an international Catholic organisation with over 300 hospitals and centres providing health and social care in 53 countries throughout the world.
The Religious Order is governed by its Constitutions and General Statues, and its world-wide leadership is the Prior General and his Council who are based in Rome.
Regional divisions of the Order are know as Provinces. Ireland is part of the West European Province of Saint John of God which  includes Great Britain and Malawi in Central Africa. The Province is overseen by the Provincial, Brother Donatus Forkan OH. He is supported by a group called the Extended Council which includes Brothers and lay Council members.
 Brother Donatus head and shoulders small 



Brother Donatus Forkan OH - Provincial
The Provincial Curia (headquarters) is based in Stillorgan, Co. Dublin, Ireland, along with the Province's Archives and a Heritage Centre.
PHOTOGRAPH: DARA MAC DONAILL
St John of God group chief executive John Pepper

The St John of God organisation made ¤1.85 million in undisclosed payments to senior managers after being instructed by the Vatican to deal with outstanding liabilities, according to a confidential HSE audit of the charity.
“The Vatican wanted to be sure that no liability transferred to the new organisation” after St John of God restructured itself in 2012, with direct accountability to the Holy See, the audit says.
The charity provides a range of services from mental health to learning disability, many on contract from the HSE.
The audit uncovered secret payments totalling ¤6.24 million to senior lay executives. This includes a defined benefit pension scheme that transferred ¤3.586 million to four senior managers and unapproved increases in their salaries amounting to ¤277,152.
The investigation uncovered undeclared private salary payments to 14 senior staff totalling ¤528,755 as well as a further 139 cases where the charity was not in compliance with public pay policy.
The audit says St John of God has not complied with public pay policy for over 30 years, despite relying on over ¤130 million a year in State funding. Since at least 1986, “other entities” within the charity have been supplementing the salary of senior executives, whose pay costs are funded by the exchequer.
The charity last night apologised unreservedly for any hurt caused by the issues raised in the audit but said it did not believe it had deliberately misled the HSE.
St John of God has established a group to develop governance systems to ensure the service operates in accordance with legislation and regulations, a spokesman said. “This includes compliance with public pay policy.”
The audit report, which is a draft but close to finalisation, says the effect of the top-ups was to transfer the liability for future pensions on increased salaries to the taxpayer. It says SJOG had “many opportunities from 2013 to make a full disclosure” but did not do so until June last year.
On Saturday, June 25th last year a representative of the St John of God organisation contacted the Health Service Executive with a bombshell revelation. An internal whistleblower had given details to a Sunday newspaper of a secret ¤1.6 million payment made to a number of its senior managers three years previously.
The newspaper had approached the St John of God organisation the previous day about the payments and a story was expected to be published imminently.
There was shock and outrage at the top level of the HSE, the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure about the payments about which they had never been previously notified.
Three years after a scandal over top-up payments for senior executives had rocked the voluntary State-funded health sector, and after extensive efforts by the HSE, Department of Health and Department of Public Expenditure to clean up this whole area with explicit new pay rules and new arrangements to police compliance, a new controversy over unauthorised payments was brewing.
Ultimately, it would emerge that the controversy at St John of God ran much deeper than the ¤1.6 million payments.
The whole top-up controversy across the health sector was toxic on a number of levels. Not only did it reveal widespread disregard for Government pay policy among State-funded bodies but at a time of austerity, when pay and conditions for ordinary workers were being severely curtailed, it showed some organisations were prepared to go to significant lengths both to conceal and to maintain remuneration levels for top executives.
Given the seriousness of the John of God revelations, the HSE internal audit unit, which had uncovered much of the broader top-up scandal in 2013, was ordered to carry out an investigation into the payments.
Over subsequent months the HSE auditors, who began by looking into the ¤1.645 million payments to the group of 14 senior managers at St John of God, ultimately uncovered a far deeper issue of non-compliance with public-service pay rules.
The audit team discovered that top-up payments at St John of God was not a new phenomenon but had been going on at least since 1986 and that non-compliance with pay rules had continued until very recently.
Late last year the HSE was notified of 83 “anomalies” in relation to non-compliance with pay policy and a further 56 came to light as recently as last February. These related not to senior management but to other staff including, for example, instances of local arrangements under which rates for allowances were not reduced in line with financial emergency legislation.
St John of God Community Services is a public-service body. It is technically known as a section 38 organisation just like dozens of others in the health sector such as voluntary hospitals such as St Vincent’s or the Mater.
Its staff are considered to be public servants and its pay policy is governed by rules set down by the Government.
St John of God Community Services had received more than ¤500 million in State funding since 2012 alone and the auditors were scathing in their findings.
Not compliant
The St John of God organisation is not compliant with public pay policy and its “lack of candour” and continued non-disclosure about additional payments to staff raised fundamental issues of trust, the internal HSE audit concluded.
Apart from the payment of the additional sums to the group of senior managers, the HSE auditors said it was even more concerning that St John of God had between 2013 and June 2016 “many opportunities to make a full disclosure of its non-compliance with public pay policy but did not do so” until effectively after the whistleblower had gone to the Sunday newspaper.
“The breaches of public pay policy identified by the audit, the lack of candour and continued non-disclosure, despite many opportunities between 2013 and 2016 raise fundamental issues of trust between St John of God and the HSE, its funder,” the auditors’ report states.
“The quid pro quo required from organisations receiving taxpayer funding is an organisational culture of transparency, accountability, compliance with all public policies, full candour and full co-operation with the funder and the provision of all information to the funder in a timely manner which faithfully represents the substance of transactions, and not just their legal form. In internal audit’s opinion, based on the findings of this audit, the organisational culture of St John of God did not meet these standards.”
The auditors said the HSE could not place reliance on the official annual compliance statements signed by the board of St John of God for the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. It suggested these documents were “misleading” as the organisation was not observing pay policy in those years.
The audit report found top-up arrangements for senior staff at St John of God had been a feature of the organisation since at least 1986.
Pensions
The auditors found that at that time there were four managers who were receiving additional pay over the official Department of Health-approved salary rate as well as having access to a private defined-benefit pension scheme.
The number of senior staff receiving additional payments increased over time and had reached 14 by 2013.
St John of God maintained the salary top-ups provided to senior managers were in respect of additional duties they performed for the order over and above their public roles.
The HSE auditors contended this meant senior managers were receiving a publicly funded salary for performing a full-time job but were in effect “only working part time for the publicly funded section 38 agency”.
In essence the senior managers were paid in two ways: their official Department of Health-approved rate, which was pensionable under a public-service superannuation scheme; and a separate additional payment which was not pension able.
The audit said the full amount of the salaries of the managers concerned was paid through the St John of God exchequer-funded payroll until June 2009. The order said it paid for the additional top-up amounts itself.
The significance of 2009 was that about that time the government introduced a public-service pension levy for State employees under emergency legislation introduced following the collapse of the public finances.
The pension levy in reality had little to do with pensions. Some staff across the public service who did not have pensions had to pay. In essence it was the first public-service pay cut.
The audit maintained that the St John of God order considered the application of the pension levy to the full salary to the managers in receipt of the top-up arrangements to be inappropriate as they were not making pension contributions in respect of the additional salary and would only secure pension benefits on the State-approved element of their remuneration.
“For this reason, the provincial of the St John of God decided to establish an order payroll – a private payroll – on which the non-pensionable portion of the directors’ and chief executive’s salary was paid.”
The audit said the gross value of the additional salaries paid to the 14 senior managers through the private payroll annually was in excess of ¤478,945 or more than ¤528,000 when employer’s PRSI was included.
“The additional salaries ranged from ¤1,700 per annum to ¤107,000 per annum. Excluding these two outliers, the range of the private salaries for 12 of the 14 employees ranged from ¤23,168 to ¤40,725.”
The top-up arrangements at St John of God were not unique. Similar additional pay and perks were secretly being paid to executives at a host of other voluntary hospital and healthcare organisations.
However, time was running out on these confidential arrangements. Rumours had been rife in certain quarters for years about the true scale of remuneration in some section 38 bodies but the full picture did not emerge until a HSE internal audit of top-level pay across the sector began in 2012.
In September 2013 The Irish Times reported that the then unpublished report had discovered executives at State-funded voluntary hospitals and agencies were receiving more than ¤3.2 million in allowances and benefits on top of salary.
Further details published by this newspaper led to the controversy over pay at the Central Remedial Clinic, St Vincent’s Healthcare Group and elsewhere in the health sector.
In September 2013, on foot of the HSE findings, the Department of Health issued new rules that specified that section 38 organisations were not permitted to supplement approved rates of pay using either exchequer or non-exchequer funding.
In November, as the storm over top-ups continued, St John of God engaged financial advisers and sought to address its non-compliance with pay policy.
In late November 13 of the 14 managers had their salaries on the exchequer -funded payroll increased to take account of the value of their previously-private top-up arrangement. These salary rises ranged from 5 per cent to 48.5 per cent.
The full salary was now subject to both the pension levy and pension contributions from that point.
The cost of the increased salary was funded by a management charge to the Hospitaller Order of St John of God Western Europe Province. In essence it was privately funded but the audit said no approval was sought from the HSE for these salary increases.
However, a compensation scheme was also devised for the managers under which they received lump-sum payments through a private payroll totalling ¤1.829 million (including employer’s PRSI) which was subject to tax.
Noterms
The audit said there were no terms and conditions attached to the compensation deal and there were no signed statements or acknowledgments.
St John of God told the auditors the compensation was paid to buy out a potential risk that the State would pay pensions to the managers concerned only on the lower approved portion of their salary.
However, the audit concluded that the managers were compensated for having to pay the pension levy and make pension contributions in respect of their previously topped-up salary until their retirement – up to 22 years away in some cases.
The audit said this had the effect of transferring significant potential pension risk on the privately funded element of the increased salary away from the order and on to the taxpayer.
The audit linked the move by St John of God to eliminate the risk of liability for future pensions on the additional payments to rules imposed by the Vatican on a restructuring of the order.
“In 2012 the order had received canonical approval for its restructuring, a condition of which was that all liabilities had to be provided for and no risks could remain. The Vatican wanted to be sure that no liability transferred to the new organisation,” the audit concluded.
‘ ‘ It would emerge that the controversy at St John of God ran much deeper than the ¤1.6 million payments.

PAT SAYS:

"He went out to do good - and he did well"

Currently the Catholic Church internationally and in Ireland is embroiled in all kinds of scandals.

Scandals occur in various areas of life like -  MONEY - POWER - SEX.

It seems that the RC Church is drowning in all these areas.


When this happens it is a sign that a church has wandered away from its initial vision and the vision of its Founder.

When Jesus was asked how his followers could be judged he replied:

"IT IS BY THEIR FRUITS THAT SHE SHALL KNOW THEM".

In that context the fruits of the RC Church that wee see nearly every day would suggest that we are dealing with a BAD TREE that is producing BAD FRUITS?

36 comments:

  1. Blessed are the whistle blowers.

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  2. The crowd running it were a disgrace, my nephew has Downes Syndrome, they were trying to reduce services to these kids falsely claiming that the funding had been cut. It wasn't the brothers it was the chief executive and managers they appointed, the brothers did superb work, they took their eye off the ball and trusted the wrong person.

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  3. Bishop Pat, where is Fr Eamon Murray? Did he move home or is he still in England?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My understanding is that Father Murray has retired home to Northern Ireland on health grounds but remains a priest "in good standing" of his English diocese.

      Delete
  4. As I've already said or intimated, the Roman Catholic Church is a stinking whore.

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  5. Anti-Catholic nonsense. A very extreme blog indeed, worrying given today's circumstances.

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    Replies
    1. Get over yerself, ya prick!

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    2. The blog is only repeating what is in the national newspapers.

      The only extremes involved are the extreme abuse and scandal permeating the Catholic Church,!

      Delete
    3. More verbal abuse from Magna Carta to another commenter's honest opinion. Although it's hard having to hit penalty notices targets when you've been up on the bottle all night.

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    4. Hello there. (Hic😎)

      Delete
  6. I love Roman Catholic priests. I really do.

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  7. Pat when are you investigating the west: Galway, Clonfert and Tuam?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Now.

      Just send me all the information you have.

      bishopbuckley1@outlook.com

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    2. Are we about to be scandalised again? I wonder.

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  8. Seems Magna has really gone " over the top" in these recent posts. Hardly a contribution to adult debate! The poor guy seems to be tired and emotional. The best treatment for that is a long and very quiet rest. Time for your medicine Magna. Meanwhile we can have some reasonable sharing on the various issues which have exercised us for the past few days.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Magna, like many is entitled to have a "justified anger" with the abuses etc in Catholicism.

      But in here we need to share views rationally and with moderate language.

      Let's resolve to do that.

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    2. Well, how's this for 'adult debate'? What is the personification of uselessness? A Roman Catholic priest, of course.

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  9. What's the story at 11.33.

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  10. There is only one priest I respect and have done since I was a teen: Buckley.

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    Replies
    1. Magna, I'm humbled by your comment. But please remember I am far from perfect in every way.

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    2. You have no idea. You were my hero, the kind of Gospel-centred priest I wanted to be and tried to be. I was the only one who was faithful to the promise of celibacy. I tried so very hard to be a good priest. So very hard.

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    3. Ok. Just be a good person. Be your best self. That's all that's needed :-)

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    4. Do you realise Mags how barking mad you sound? You must be really hitting the bottle these days!

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  11. I agree with Magna. When i was growing up there were two papers bought in our house on a Sunday. The Sunday world for my parents and the News of the world for me to read Pat's column. now in my 30's and I still follow Pat's writings and admire above all his humanity and understanding.

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    Replies
    1. Years ago I was listening to Yves San Lauraunt being interviewed.

      He was asked: "Where does all your creativity come from"?.

      I was gobsmacked by his answer - "From the cauldron of pain within me".

      Any of us who are "in touch" got our in-touchness- from our struggled. O Felix Culpa.

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    2. Very low brow reading for an Irish Catholic family. Betrays a working class background.

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  12. How dare you mention my name. I'll take you to the High Court!

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  13. We know that you are a cousin of Magna Carta!

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    Replies
    1. I think he was related to Falls Lily??

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  14. As a seminarian in the 80’s I had the chance to work with the JoG’s in Celbridge, Co. Kildare. I witnessed some great work and the beginning of some truly revolutionary thinking in terms of the care of persons with a profound learning disability. Even then though, I questioned the capacity of some of their ‘directors of services’ – men who appeared to be deemed fit for their role solely because they were members of a religious order. That many of these men succeeded had much to do with the people who worked for them and had nothing to do with the talents of said men.

    I had the chance to work for them again in Belfast when they tried, and failed, disastrously, to establish services here for adults with a learning disability and for the elderly. Again, I had a sense of good men, (brother Finnian Gallagher and Bro / Fr John ???/ Bro David) way out of their depth – only there because they were members of a religious order.
    When they first came to Belfast, John Pepper was known as their ‘hitman’ – if the Order wanted someone ‘taken out’ or something settled – he was the ‘one.’ Something that brothers Finnian, John and David were not above promoting and which always struck me as odd. I am not making a judgment here – I’m only giving my perspective.
    I, briefly, managed one of their services and John Pepper was on the interview panel. I cannot recall who told me, I think it was Bro David, that Pepper was the only one I needed to impress. I already, instinctually, new this and was prepared.
    There was always a sense of tension – even among the brothers when Pepper’s name was mentioned. When a visit was imminent, there was a sense of unease about the facilities we were responsible for. Again, I was left with the impression that this wasn’t a Christian way to run an institution.
    Just some random thoughts.

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