{"id":174915,"date":"2025-12-04T15:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/174915\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T15:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:10:08","slug":"ifi-accused-of-throwing-employee-under-the-bus-over-uninsured-car-involved-in-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/174915\/","title":{"rendered":"IFI accused of throwing employee ‘under the bus’ over uninsured car involved in crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inland Fisheries Ireland<\/a> \u201cthrew an employee under the bus\u201d by failing to notify them and the garda\u00ed that a vehicle involved in a road traffic accident was uninsured, an Oireachtas committee has heard.<\/p>\n

The D\u00e1il\u2019s spending watchdog, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), was told by Ireland\u2019s waterways regulator it was \u201cnot aware of an obligation\u201d to notify the garda\u00ed. The committee heard a Garda summons was sent to the employee related to driving without insurance.<\/p>\n

Island Fisheries Ireland\u2019s (IFI) appearance at the committee came several weeks after a damning audit<\/a> completed by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Seamus McCarthy, highlighted a litany of governance failures.<\/p>\n

This included dozens of credit cards being given to employees, and an uninsured vehicle owned by IFI, which was involved in an accident, leading to a \u20ac230,000 repair bill.<\/p>\n

Some 15 vehicles hired by the organisation between June 1 and July 27, 2021, were uninsured.<\/p>\n

Labour TD Eoghan Kenny quizzed Barry Fox, IFI deputy chief executive, on two summonses, which had been sent to the employee who was driving the vehicle at the time of the August 2021 crash. This included, he said, a summons for driving without insurance and another for dangerous driving.<\/p>\n

When asked if the garda\u00ed had been informed the vehicle involved in the crash was uninsured, Michael Cusack, IFI\u2019s field service manager, told Mr Kenny the body \u201cwas not aware that we had a legal obligation to do so\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said IFI was not aware the vehicle was not insured in mid-November 2021. However, Mr Kenny argued this contradicted previous evidence given to the PAC by former chief executive Francis O\u2019Donnell, who said he knew on the day of the accident. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou allowed a staff member to receive a summons from An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na in relation to no insurance, even though you were acutely aware of the fact that the vehicle was not insured,\u201d Mr Kenny said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou allowed a staff member to receive a summons [with] no mention of IFI on the summons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Fox said he had \u201cno sight\u201d of any summons given to an employee related to driving with no insurance, with Mr Kenny saying that the employee was not told until October 2022 about the insurance issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIFI did not produce that documentation [confirming the insurance was not valid] to An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na or to the staff member,\u201d Mr Kenny said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow you\u2019re saying, \u2018I didn\u2019t understand there was a legal obligation\u2019. Of course there is a legal obligation.<\/p>\n

\u201cFalse documentation was provided to your staff member, who then, in turn, provided it to An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we ultimately have is a staff member being absolutely, [\u2026] thrown under the bus for this.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr Fox denied this and suggested the summons did not relate to driving without insurance.<\/p>\n

However, Mr Kenny insisted there were two summonses issued, including one for driving without valid insurance.<\/p>\n

Mr Fox also said IFI \u201cdid not willingly\u201d give the garda\u00ed any false documentation. He acknowledged the insurance certificate provided following the accident was not valid.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, he also confirmed IFI had no leads \u201cwhatsoever\u201d about the cause of the pollution on the Blackwater River<\/a>, which killed 32,000 fish.<\/p>\n

Mr Fox said it was suspected a \u201cplume\u201d may have been discharged \u201cabout 72 hours before the first detection of dead fish\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inland Fisheries Ireland \u201cthrew an employee under the bus\u201d by failing to notify them and the garda\u00ed that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1111,61,60,43,1112],"class_list":["post-174915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-court-and-crime","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-politics-and-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}