'Charity' bingo hall to stay open as injunction extended

Moncler Coats Women Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes, Oscar Wilde famously wrote. Well, if that is the case, Kevin Cardiff and his minions in the Department of Finance are very experienced indeed.Cardiff (whose salary is €200,000 a year), is the embattled outgoing Secretary General at the Department of Finance, who is being dispatched to a plum €1.6m gig at the European Court of Auditors next year.But that could all now change.Last Tuesday, it emerged that the country's debt is actually €3.6bn lower than previously thought because of a catastrophic accounting error within Cardiff's department on Merrion Street.Finance was told of this double counting of a debt relating to the Housing Finance Agency 15 months ago, but only woke up to its significance last week.It occurred because, in 2010, the NTMA had taken on responsibility for borrowing on the HFA's behalf.Dragged before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday to explain how such a blunder could happen, what emerged during Cardiff's testimony was a colossal litany of failure, incompetence and stupidity within the walls of the Department of Finance in Merrion Street.In the wake of that car crash, ranting performance at the committee, serious questions are being asked over his suitability for that European job, which he described as a "doddle" in comparison with his current post.Pressure has already come upon the Cabinet, and in particular Michael Noonan, his immediate boss, to withdraw that nomination and such pressure is likely to intensify as the true extent of the Budget horrors emerge.What is clear is that Cardiff is very sore.Appointed to the top job in finance in March 2010 by the late Brian Lenihan, he sees himself as the "helmsman", who has spent every waking hour doing his best for his country and trying to keep the ship afloat in the middle of the storm.At one point, under sustained attack, Cardiff became quite emotional, lashing out at criticisms of him by the PAC. "I have served my country as diligently as I can. My record has been very solid," he insisted.He then apologised to PAC chairman John McGuinness, who was severely critical of him."Sorry, chairman, I am having a bit of a rant," Cardiff said. Giving him little sympathy, McGuinness replied sharply: "It's not a rant, it's just inaccurate."It was a telling putdown as McGuinness reminded Cardiff that, since 2008, 22 separate recommendations to the department of finance from the PAC had been ignored.It is the second time in recent weeks Cardiff has sought to play the poor mouth. At the Global Economic Irish Forum, he lashed out at me and the media in general for trying to portray his departure as the Fine Gael/Labour coalition wanting rid of him."I mean, you guys do that and think it has no impact, but that damages my reputation. Now a few months on it becomes a thing, and people go back to that. It's difficult when your family are worried about you and their position," he barked at me.During Thursday's three-hour grilling at the PAC, Cardiff and his fellow senior official Michael McGrath, along with Oliver Whelan from the NTMA, reluctantly revealed how the cock-up happened. What is clear is that, since August 2010, one middle-management person, who was on secondment from the Central Statistics Office, failed repeatedly to acknowledge or adequately deal with this double counting anomaly, despite repeated warnings from the NTMA.As far back as early 2010, initial queries from the NTMA were being raised with finance but they fell on deaf ears. According to a series of emails, released to the PAC, it was August 23, 2010, that a senior financial controller in the NTMA sought clarity from finance as to how to deal with the HFA debt figure. Another email was sent demanding a decision on September 1, 2010, and another three days later, but nothing came back. "Did you make any progress on the housing finance query? I am going on leave and hoping to finalise the return," the email asked.And yet nothing went back.As we learned at the committee, Whelan from the NTMA said they had merely assumed the matter had been corrected, as that was the impression given as far back as March this year. But the matter hadn't been cleared up.As a result, Ireland published six rounds of incorrect data, both through the CSO and also in the accounts and data it provided to the European Statistical agency, Eurostat. In terms of embarrassments, they don't come much bigger. And Cardiff, as the accounting officer, was ultimately to blame.While the original offending official had finished his secondment back in March, it was only two Mondays ago, a whole 15 months after the NTMA first raised concern over this issue in August 2010, that the section within the department finally realised the significance of their error."It seems you are right about the double count of €3.5bn in the Travel fair opens in Taipei for cross-Strait tourism development ebt. In fact, it appears to me that there is a double count. I haven't talked to anyone here about it. We publish the pre-Budget outlook on November 4. It will probably be reflected there," someone within finance told the NTMA in an email on Tuesday, October 25.However, notwithstanding the size of the cock-up -- €3.6bn -- it took a further three full days before any senior managers, including Cardiff and McGrath, became aware of what was going on."Why so long to tell any senior management?" came the questions at the committee. "We needed to fact check and make sure we were correct," was the reply.Cardiff said he himself was puzzled as to why the matter had not been passed up the line."The worrying thing is how little a role I had in this," he told the committee."Of course it should have been passed up, I would have liked to have known about this last August," McGrath added.But when they did find out, did Cardiff or any of the senior officials phone Noonan? Did they drop everything else and convene a crisis meeting to get to the bottom of this? No, of course not.McGrath was out of the country and wouldn't be back at his desk until the following Tuesday morning. He did, however, instruct that a note was sent to Noonan's private office late on the Friday evening on a bank holiday weekend. The minister, who lives in Limerick, would not see it until the following Tuesday -- a full eight days after the Department of Finance first realised the foul-up.Was the note marked urgent, FG TD Eoghan Murphy asked. It was not, came the reply. McGrath said he first spoke to Noonan last Tuesday when he returned from his time abroad.Several committee members, including Shane Ross, expressed their displeasure that at no point over the weekend was the minister contacted by phone about the matter. Once the matter was brought to Noonan's attention, it was swiftly put out in the public domain ahead of his budgetary announcement on Friday.During the meeting, Cardiff was also asked whether the failure to spot the error was as a result of long-standing tensions between the NTMA and the Department of Finance. Such is that tension, that it has been suggested that the NTMA, including Nama, tired of being kicked around like a political football, sought to embarrass the Government and the department.Cardiff denied there was tension, describing NTMA boss John Corrigan as a "decent guy".A further embarrassment for Cardiff, the NTMA and the Comptroller and Auditor General (who Noonan singled out for missing the error) came when it emerged that there was no auditing of consolidated debt figures.Did this mean there could be many more errors like this, the committee asked."Well, it's the only one we think is of this egregious size. But there will always be smaller errors, but we try and minimise them as best we can," he replied unconvincingly. Ross went further and called on Cardiff to personally guarantee that he would have this matter fully resolved before he left with his "saddle bags full" to Europe. Cardiff said he could not promise that. "You will leave the department in a total shambles," Ross fired back.It was Sinn Fein's Mary Lou McDonald who really got under Cardiff's skin by saying he wasn't suitable for the European Auditors' job. McGuinness piped in and said that there had to be some penalty on those responsible for this disaster.McGuinness furthered the pressure on Cardiff by saying his plans to hold an internal inquiry into how this all happened were ludicrous. Central to the inquiry will be McGrath, a man who is at the heart of the foul-up, and who is among the speculated frontrunners to succeed Cardiff.While the Government insisted on Friday that it still supported Cardiff's appointment for the European job, that has more to do with its desire to get rid of him.With the department tainted with the failure of the disastrous bank guarantee, benchmarking and the department's less-than-stellar record of forecasting, Noonan has made no secret in wanting to freshen things up. But given how he cracked under pressure at the PAC the other day, there are now legitimate questions over Cardiff's suitability for such a prestigious job on the international stage. He has shown an extraordinary lack of judgement at several key moments. McGuinness correctly spoke about the need for sanctioning those who have failed, as is the norm in the private sector.Is this Government willing to risk embarrassing Ireland by nominating a man who missed a €3.6bn gaffe in his own backyard? Worse still, will it nominate someone who sat on it for four days before telling his minister?This is a defining moment for Enda Kenny and his Government. Will they do what they promised to do and end the culture of rewarding failure? If they don't, they are no better than the previous Fianna Fail government they have repeatedly sought to deplore. Elite NBA players light up CBA new season