Console. Charity, Irish-style

Spanish Eyes

pablo128 wrote: »

How would you get everything for free?

And child benefit is only paid until the child is 7 yrs old now.

Sorry that is incorrect. Child benefit is much more generous than that. We are a great country really.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/social_welfare/social_welfare_payments/social_welfare_payments_to_families_and_children/child_benefit.html

Mary63

Child Benefit is 140 euros a month per child and paid until the child is eighteen as long as the child is in full time education.

I checked,you get one hundred euros per child in primary school if you qualify for Back to school allowance and two hundred euros per child in secondary school.You could easily kit out a primary school child for one hundred euros and you could probably get most of a secondary school uniform for less than two hundred euros.

Do people get further help towards books and iPads etc for secondary school.

Broken Hearted Road

I wasn't following this from the beginning and only learned about this in recent days and what went on here is absolutely disposable. I never donated money to Console but clearly there are people who do. The recession brought about many difficulties for many people and no doubt people would have donated with limited budgets and then to have these people in charge of this charity milking it of donations is sickening. Not only that with suicide, it's hits people. Suicide here in Ireland has been epic and no doubt with the recession financial problems could have been a factor with some suicides. This whole thing is sickening.


As for supporting charities:
There are a few charities that I like and support whenever I can whether it's by donating belongings into a shop or give g some euros into a charity collection bucket or whatever every once in a while. A few local animal charities and a cancer charity but my favourite is Enable Ireland. TK Maxx have collection boxes for Enable Ireland. If I have a spare euro or a few, I pop that in.

There are other charities that I honest to god wouldn't even look at. I was stopped on the street before by amnesty international and I didn't like them one bit. The guy went yapping away and bla, bla, bla, from him and something on the lines of 'and for the price of a pint and you could help support us and pushing a form requesting for bank details'. I found him to be a bit arrogant. As if I drink every week and have the money to give up. I thought: like, you don't know me or anything about me or anything about my life or my income which is piss fcuking poor by the way.

If we all gave pieces of our income away every week to every bucket pusher, there would be a need for more charities to say the least.

lawlolawl

Mary63 wrote: »

What could 365 people be doing in a country that has very high Child Benefit payments,I genuinely don't understand child poverty in this country,if you are very poor do you not get everything for free.

You could give people an infinite amount of money in child benefit, back to school allowance etc. but it won't prevent child poverty if they just spend it all on fags, booze, holidays or whatever else these people are wasting it on. It's long past time we issued food stamps to the long term unemployed or gave them some form of charge card that could only be used for certain essential products.

There is a certain sizable sector of the population who are just milking the system and charities are just another part of the system to be milked. Put on the poor mouth and not only will you get money from all angles but people will treat you like a sacred cow.

brooke 2

maudgonner wrote: »

That's a line that has been repeated a lot when discussion of charity salaries comes up. And I see the logic to it - if you want to run a major company the CEO would expect a salary much higher than that.

BUT we have thousands of charities in Ireland, they're not all major corporations. And in the case of Console and many others, they are not recruiting people worth that kind of money, they're clearly giving CEO positions to people who have no qualifications or experience to justify anything remotely like that money. But it was handed to them, or more accurately they handed it to themselves.

So clearly paying huge salaries does not get us the calibre of people that it should. And paying huge salaries may well attract the wrong kind of people. I'd far rather see someone at the head of a charity who is genuinely passionate to be there and makes sacrifices to do so, than someone who is in it for the paycheck.

Pay peanuts, get monkeys. How many times have we heard this trotted out? Makes me sick! Those 'noble' CEOs, on obscene salaries, as we have seen so often, would sooner deprive the needy of their services than reduce their totally inappropriate wages by one cent. In my opinion, these are not the type of people we need at the helm of charities. They have proven, time and time again, that they are obsessed by the 'almighty dollar', to the detriment of those whom they are pretending to help. :mad:

Broken Hearted Road

stateofflux wrote: »

In My opinion the Government is at fault for the mess. A lot of charities are doing work a government body should be doing. So the government just let them at it and prop them up with additional funding.

The amount of charities in this countries (most of which serve absolutely no purpose) is ridiculous.

the good generous nature of Irish people is a vast money pit ripe for the plunder. Enough is enough.

100% this and was my thoughts too. There is one charity that I'm fond of - Enable Ireland - I think they do great work in which I'm familiar with and I think it should come in under the work of the HSE.

brooke 2

Simon2015 wrote: »

Charity CEO's Adi Roche (cheronobyl children) and Maureen Forrest (hope foundation) both work for free.

Thats what I call real charity workers.

Also we have Brid Leahy of ASH Ireland who only takes a 36k salary.

The idea that you have to pay charity CEO's 6 figure salaries to get the "best people" is nonsense. By paying out that kind of money you will only attract charlatans.

http://www.thejournal.ie/irish-charity-ceo-salaries-spending-best-practice-2659408-Mar2016/

Absolutely!

lawlolawl

Broken Hearted Road wrote: »

100% this and was my thoughts too. There is one charity that I'm fond of - Enable Ireland - I think they do great work in which I'm familiar with and I think it should come in under the work of the HSE.

And even if that happened someone would still set up some form of charity independent of the HSE and use it to take money from well meaning people.

The entire charity industry is a sham at its core and i genuinely feel bad for the people who got involved to actually try and make a difference. Ironic that they are usually the ones who aren't getting any compensation for their time.

Shint0

selastich2 wrote: »

picked up "for his own protection", I can see where this is going. In other new 2million in secret top up payment to SJOG


http /www .independent.ie/irish-news/hse-to-investigate-2m-in-secret-payments-to-st-john-of-gods-senior-managers-34853663.html

While for the most part SJOG staff on the ground are excellent in their care and advocacy for people with disabilities, to my knowledge their senior management wouldn't be beyond reproach and resorting to underhand tactics to protect their 'squeaky clean' image which has come in for some criticism publicly in more recent times.

While any payments to top up salaries most likely came from the organisation's own private funds it would still appear to contravene HSE pay regulations if it is true so will be interesting to see what defense they come up with and what spin they try to put on it if the issue comes before the Public Accounts Committee.

Around the issue that employees and heads of charitable/non-government organisations should only be paid around or just above average industrial wage, I can't necessarily agree with that. That's back to the old argument that Moore McDowell tried to put forward years ago around nurses pay that it's a vocation.

If people have relevant third level education, are professionally trained and experienced they ought to command the same pay level as other professions and industries at a similar level. The issue is around trying to root out and eradicate abuse of the sector rather than trying to penalise those who genuinely are interested in social progress and working on behalf of social justice initiatives while trying to serve the needs of the most vulnerable.

diomed

A proverb that expresses the overriding demands of taking care of one's family, before caring for others.
'Charity begins at home' isn't from the bible but it is so near to being so that it is reasonable to describe it as biblical. The notion that a man's family should be his foremost concern is expressed in 1 Timothy 5:8, King James Bible, 1611:
But if any prouide not for his owne, & specially for those of his owne house, hee hath denied the faith, and is worse then an infidel.

John Wyclif had expressed the same idea as early as 1382, in Of Prelates, reprinted in English Works, 1880:
Charite schuld bigyne at hem-self.

John Fletcher came very close to using the phrase in the comedy Wit without Money, circa 1625:
Charity and beating begins at home.

Sir Thomas Browne was the first to put the expression into print in the form we now use, in Religio Medici, 1642:
Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world: yet is every man his greatest enemy.

Simon2015

I wonder has Paul Kelly ever had a real job in his life or has he always been a con man ?

gctest50

It'll all be out tomorrow - the judge not having any of their cr@p :

http://www.rte.ie/news/2016/0704/800048-console/

Lawyers for Ms McKenna told the court this morning that they had been served with the injunctions on Friday evening and wanted more time to respond.


However, Mr Justice Paul Gilligan said the matter had to go ahead tomorrow morning against Mr and Mrs Kelly and he said he did not think it would be appropriate for the case to be broken up.

He gave Ms McKenna's lawyers until 9.30am tomorrow to deliver their sworn affidavit and said the matter would go ahead against all three defendants tomorrow.

Glenbhoy

I think the court case refers to the serving of injunctions that stop them from having anything to do with the charity, using it's assets and returning company assets (cars etc).

It'll be a few years before any criminal cases come together (if ever), I would suspect.

Joe prim

pablo128 wrote: »

Plenty of people out there would take a 1k a week job, no matter what it was.

No doubt about that, but could they actually do it?

SterlingArcher

Joe prim wrote: »

No doubt about that, but could they actually do it?

Yessss. Coz Kelly has set the bar so damn high. .

maudgonner

I, for one, would be prepared to pretend to be a pilot/doctor for oooh, let's say 49,950 p.a.?*








*As long as no actual flying/doctoring was involved.

mariaalice

The whole charity sector is a symptom of the type of government we have has for the foundation of the state and the ad hock way health care developed in the Irish state.

The state abdicated its responsibility for social services and health care and even education to voluntary organisation and lobed money at them to provide service, but the money was often ad hock grudging give and subject to the wims of various government department, and never fully funded, plus dependant on free labour from the religious orders.

That is being addressed with services level agreements with organisation but its no wonder there are all kind of messy issues in the sector.

The system has also brought about the emergence over the past 30 years of a huge amount of employment in the area social policy, social justice, lobbying of government departments for money and has led to inconsistency in services that people get.

Its called the mixed economy of welfare, that make it sound like someone had a though out plan which I doubt anyone did except in modern times.

topper75

mariaalice wrote: »

The state abdicated its responsibility for social services and health care and even education to voluntary organisation and lobed money at them to provide service, but the money was often ad hock grudging give and subject to the wims of various government department, and never fully funded, plus dependant on free labour from the religious orders.

This 'abdication' as you call it is much older than our state.

The British admin in the 19th century willingly gave over the running of primary education to the RC church.

Religious orders have taken on care of poor and sick since they arrived here in the middle ages. Very much their initiative.

If fact when the British admin did take on responsibility directly for the poor, it didn't yield fond memories - see Workhouses.

I'm not a fan of the Irish free state - but it is not fair to land this all at their door.

Simon2015

Apparently Paul Kelly lived for 10 years in Australia.

I wonder had he got any other scams going when he was over there ?

The High Court has granted an order to allow the lock to be broken on a self-storage unit which was hired by Paul Kelly on June 28th.

According to the Independent.ie, there was a media ban on reporting the order until the lock was broken. Should be interesting. Hopefully the unit contains paperwork which will help the Garda investigation, or better still, cash.

A listener to Liveline rang David Hall to tell him about the storage unit, after listening to the show last week. Aboy Joe Duffy.

http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/interim-ceo-of-console-gets-permission-to-break-lock-on-storage-unit-rented-by-paul-kelly-34855730.html

David Hall, interim CEO, was also given permission to inspect and remove any documents or material relating to Console from Unit G9, Remedy Self Storage, Tougher Business Park, Naas, Co Kildare.
Mr Justice Paul Gilligan said reporting of the order should not take place until 3.30pm to give Mr Hall an opportunity to get to the Naas unit and to notify local gardai of the order.

Martin Hayden SC (with Keith Farry BL), for Console, said there was an urgency to the application because Mr Hall believes the charity is still in serious and exceptional danger.
In an affidavit, Mr Hall said he received a phone call last Friday (July 1) following an interview he gave on the Joe Duffy Show on RTE radio "from a person saying they had important information".

He was told that on June 28 last, Paul Kelly and his wife Patricia had been seen at the self storage unit. Mr Hall made enquires and confirmed that on June 28, Mr Kelly had rented a unit there and had paid cash for it.
Mr Hall is unaware if the cash was withdrawn from Console's accounts or credit cards.

He was informed Mr Kelly made one delivery to the unit on June 28, driving an Audi Q5, while he and his wife made as second delivery the same day, using a Mercedes vehicle. Mr Hall said he was informed by a source Mrs Kelly was at the door of the container unit while Mr Kelly appeared to be inside.
Mr Hall said said contrary to last Thursday's court order preventing the Kellys accessing Console bank and other accounts, and ordering the return of property, he had not been provided with any documentation about the storage unit or its contents.

He did not know what documents property or other monies are in the unit and he believed both the company premises, records and documents are still accessible to Mr Kelly, his wife and to Mr Kelly's sister, Joan McKenna.

Cunning Stunt

Looking at pics on RTE news, heaps of folders and documents in the storage container. Hopefully enough info there to put them away for a long time! Fair dues to whoever called it in!

Winterlong

Cunning Stunt wrote: »

Looking at pics on RTE news, heaps of folders and documents in the storage container. Hopefully enough info there to put them away for a long time! Fair dues to whoever called it in!

I really hope you are right.
Yerman who phoned it in was very specific with the information down to the type of cars they drove.
I see those cars were handed over at the weekend.

NIMAN

Can anyone asnwer this question?

Is the guy involved in all this mess likely to do jail time?

Samaris

NIMAN wrote: »

Can anyone asnwer this question?

Is the guy involved in all this mess likely to do jail time?

With the level of public knowledge and anger about this particular case, I'd be surprised if they didn't.

Although I guess possibly an appeal based on not being able to get a fair trial due to publicity at some point.

pablo128

NIMAN wrote: »

Can anyone asnwer this question?

Is the guy involved in all this mess likely to do jail time?

The burning question is did he do anything illegal or not? He may have done some extremely immoral things, but maybe not illegal.

I am in no way condoning this familys actions. If they are found to have committed a crime, and since that crime would be related to ripping off an important charity service, I hope they all do time and lose everything they have.

Samaris

pablo128 wrote: »

The burning question is did he do anything illegal or not? He may have done some extremely immoral things, but maybe not illegal.

I am in no way condoning this familys actions. If they are found to have committed a crime, and since that crime would be related to ripping off an important charity service, I hope they all do time and lose everything they have.

Fraud is fairly illegal, as is embezzlement. Think they do both carry prison terms.

pablo128

Samaris wrote: »

Fraud is fairly illegal, as is embezzlement. Think they do both carry prison terms.

I agree. But he has to be found guilty first. I'd say that container full of paperwork will be the nail in the coffin for him.

donegaLroad

collecting money under false pretences would definitely be fraud at some level.

Doing it at the scale and time period that this guy was doing it would be a major offense.

Whether he does jail or not, I wouldn't like to be him!

Samaris

pablo128 wrote: »

I agree. But he has to be found guilty first. I'd say that container full of paperwork will be the nail in the coffin for him.

Given what's come out so far, plus the runner he and his wife did, I'll be very surprised if he's not found guilty, even if the container comes up empty! But yeah, hopefully if he is guilty, what's in there nails him. It's a despicable thing to do.

NIMAN

Samaris wrote: »

Fraud is fairly illegal, as is embezzlement. Think they do both carry prison terms.

As much as I hope this guy does time, this country has a history of letting people off the hook.

If fraud is a crime, why have only a couple of people been convicted as a result of the crash of 08?

Why have we a certain TD still in the Dail and not in jail after he misled Revenue and underpaid tax?