{"id":641839,"date":"2026-10-01T17:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T17:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/641839\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T17:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T17:46:08","slug":"blackmail-claims-by-former-inland-fisheries-chief-considered-serious-issues-by-department-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/641839\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackmail claims by former Inland Fisheries chief considered serious issues by department \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senior Department of the Environment<\/a> officials considered claims that the then chief executive of Inland Fisheries Ireland<\/a> (IFI) was being blackmailed by a senator to be very serious, an employment tribunal has heard. <\/p>\n

Denis Maher, who was head of the division in the department that oversaw IFI for 13 years until he retired in 2024, told the Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> he agreed that Francis O\u2019Donnell should bring his concerns to garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n

Maher said a senior colleague had told him he was contacted by the senator and that O\u2019Donnell had been in touch with him and his colleague about the senator.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe felt he was being blackmailed by this person,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The tribunal has directed that people not giving evidence in the case should not be identified.<\/p>\n

Maher said he had discussions with his colleague and they believed the issues were very serious, as blackmail was an offence. However, he said it not was something the department could look into.<\/p>\n

When O\u2019Donnell indicated that he planned to go to garda\u00ed, Maher said he and his colleague \u201cabsolutely concurred\u201d. <\/p>\n

At a previous hearing in the case<\/a>, O\u2019Donnell said he told garda\u00ed he was being blackmailed by a senator. He said he was pressured to reinstate an IFI employee who had been suspended pending an investigation. He said he told garda\u00ed that \u201csignificant fraud had occurred at IFI\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the department later received a protected disclosure making allegations against him (O\u2019Donnell).<\/p>\n

The former chief executive said in his earlier evidence that he was informed by a senior department official that a senator had called him to say if the individual concerned was not reinstated, details in the protected disclosure would be made public.<\/p>\n

Maher, who was giving evidence on behalf of O\u2019Donnell on Thursday, said the department was concerned about leaks from the IFI board.<\/p>\n

He said it was \u201cparticularly perturbing\u201d that contents of a protected disclosure making allegations against O\u2019Donnell, which the department understood was not to be shared on foot of legal advice, had been brought by a board member to a meeting in the agency in December 2022.<\/p>\n

He said that night, under the cloak of parliamentary privilege, details were read out in the D\u00e1il by a TD.<\/p>\n

Maher said earlier, in May 2022, a senator \u201cresurrected\u201d a number issues that had been settled the previous year in IFI\u2019s statement of internal controls, and made allegations against O\u2019Donnell. He said some of the issues raised by the senator were \u201cblatantly false\u201d and some of the information could only have come from inside the board.<\/p>\n

Maher said the then minister for the environment, Eamon Ryan, appointed a senior counsel to examine governance issues in IFI in the summer of 2022. He said the report found these to be \u201csub optimal\u201d and recommended significant changes. He said the board had agreed to implement these in full but this was \u201cnot followed through\u201d.<\/p>\n

Maher said Ryan became \u201cextremely dissatisfied\u201d and decided to dismiss the board on a no-fault basis.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Claims of fraud and blackmail at State fisheries body brings infighting into the publicOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

O\u2019Donnell is claiming that he was unfairly dismissed by IFI and penalised after making protected disclosures under whistleblower legislation. He has claimed he was entitled to return to his substantive post as a regional director in IFI, but this is disputed by the agency.<\/p>\n

Maher maintained IFI had delegated sanction from the Departments of Environment and Public Expenditure to recruit, promote and appoint up to and including principal officer level. <\/p>\n

He said IFI would not have needed to get any further authorisation to appoint O\u2019Donnell to his former post of regional director as this was classified as a grade below principal officer level.<\/p>\n

The hearing continues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior Department of the Environment officials considered claims that the then chief executive of Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641840,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[811,13983,6285,61,60,43,1650,115],"class_list":["post-641839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-california","tag-election","tag-horizontal","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641839","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=641839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}