Councillor fails to declare €146k earned from local authority contracts

A Galway City councillor and businessman has not declared tens of thousands of euro worth of local authority contracts – despite being obliged to do so.

Pragmatica, the company of Fine Gael’s Pearce Flannery, earned in excess of €146,000 providing training and mentoring services to councils across the country in the past two years.

Cllr Flannery, the city’s Deputy Mayor, like all elected members, is obliged to declare the total amount of the contracts if they exceed €6,348.69 (IR£5,000) or if the aggregate value of several contracts to the same local authority exceeds that amount.

Cllr Flannery said it was his understanding that he only had to declare if one contract to a local authority exceeded €6,348.69 and he was not aware he had to declare if several contracts to the same local authority exceeded that figure.

The West Ward representative, was elected to the Council for the first time in May 2014, and was voted in as deputy mayor last month. He was unsuccessful in a bid to win a seat in Seanad Éireann earlier this year.

The Galway City Tribune has established, using the Freedom of Information Act, that Cllr Flannery, through his company Pragmatica, earned a total of €146,480 from six local authorities, and their Local Enterprise Offices.

The payments relate to 2014 and 2015, and are in return for providing training workshops, courses and mentoring services.

In Section 8 of local authority members’ declaration of interests, councillors are supposed to outline: “Any contract to which you were a party, or were in any other way, directly or indirectly interested for the supply of goods or services to a local authority during the appropriate period, if the value of the goods or services supplied during the period exceeded €6,348.69, or, in case other goods or services were supplied under such a contract to a local authority during that period, if the aggregate of their value exceeded €6,348.69.”

This is a provision in the Local Government Act. Councillors are obliged to fill out reforms each year retrospectively for the 12 months previous.

In his annual declaration to Galway City Council, signed on February 2015, Cllr Flannery, Section 8 was left blank for 2014. It said “N/A”, which stands for ‘not applicable’.

The 2015 declaration, signed in February of this year, under Section 8 said: “I provide business training services and business advice to many of the Local Enterprise Offices nationally. Rarely would one single assignment exceed the figure quoted above (€6,348.69)”.

For more on this story, and the breakdown of payments, see this week’s Galway City Tribune

Clarification published on 29 July 2016

With reference to the front page story published in last week’s Galway City Tribune, headlined ‘It Just Doesn’t add Up’, Cllr. Pearse Flannery believes that the article implies he did not declare income from his work with his business Pragmatica to the revenue inspectors, that he is not tax compliant and is involved in tax evasion.

Our story related only to the requirement on local authority members to complete a declaration of interests; we did not mention nor imply any tax issue or avoidance, and we are happy to accept Cllr. Flannery’s assertion that he is fully tax compliant.