From today's Sunday Business Post:
The Consumers Association of Ireland (CAI) has authorised an €80,000 pension top-up for its chief executive, Dermott Jewell, The Sunday Business Post has learned.
Details of the top-up have emerged as the cash-strapped association holds talks with a number of creditors over debts it has amassed, while also trying to secure a bailout from the taxpayer.
Accounts filed in the Companies Office by the CAI show the organisation's revenue fell to €417,000 in the year to May 2011, down from €703,000 in 2008. It had a deficit of €129,000 by the end of last year. The organisation now has just two employees, including Jewell, down from eight in 2008.
The CAI blamed its financial difficulties on a fall in income from its magazine, Consumer Choice, as well as a failure to secure funding from the Department of Enterprise.
The CAI has traditionally been funded through its own memberships - consumers became members by subscribing to Consumer Choice. The 2011 accounts show that the magazine, which the association recently stopped printing, generated an income of €362,000 last year, some €150,000 more than the €208,000 it cost to produce.
"In those accounts, there was a new requirement to value the premises. It impacted on it, as most of our resources go into production of the magazine," said Jewell when contacted last week.
The accounts also show a sharp rise in pension payments. Pension costs climbed from €38,000 in 2010 to €99,000 in 2011.
Jewell said that the defined benefit pension scheme ran into financial difficulty and that the money was used to bolster the scheme for its members.
"There was a deficit that the association tried to build up. We tried to fill the hole," he said.
The accounts state that some €80,000 in relation to compensation to staff members was accrued. There was just one active member of the scheme and three deferred members.
The CAI's trustees agreed that a lump sum of €80,000 should be paid to compensate Jewell for a proportion of his loss as a result of the pension fund deficit. When contacted last week, Jewell refused to discuss details of his pension top-up. He also declined to disclose his own salary, but said it was below €100,000 at present.
"I am not going to - and never have - declared my salary. It is private and personal. It is nobody's business," he said.
In the four years to 2011, the CAI's accounts show that some €100,000 was claimed on travel and meeting expenses. The CAI said the expenses were for "meetings throughout the year and also staff related, marketing related and European travel to commission meetings, working group and general assemblies of our sister organisations".
The CAI is overseen by a council of ten, which is chaired by Michael Kilcoyne.
The council hit the headlines in 2008 when three board members - Diarmuid MacShane, Mel Gannon and Enid O'Dowd - resigned over concerns about future policy, as well as their inability to access information on the running of the organisation.
"We were asking questions around payments, remuneration and the money people were getting from other board memberships, but our questions weren't being answered. Board members were having to consider Freedom of Information requests to access information. There was a huge level of secrecy with regard to what was going on," said one of the board members, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Since January 2009, CAI council members have contributed 50 per cent of fees received from directorships and representations held on behalf of the association to the CAI.
The 2011 accounts state that the fees Jewell receives in respect of his representation of the CAI on boards are lodged to the CAI.
Jewell is also chair of the board of the Financial Services Ombudsman, and receives €21,600 per year for that position. He was appointed to the post in 2008.
He did not respond to questions from this newspaper relating to the fees he received for this board representation.
In recent weeks, the CAI met jobs minister Richard Bruton in an effort to obtain a cash injection from the taxpayer.
Michael Kilcoyne, who also serves as a member of Mayo County Council, said he was optimistic that the minister would approve a rescue plan. He said the CAI was in talks with companies it owed money to with a view to "putting payment plans in place".
