Glanbia - Milking the Government's Indulgence

* A story that kind of slipped under the radar in terms of public awareness.

by Seán McCárthaigh

Glanbia facilitated breaches of rules governing the allocation of milk quotas by one of the group’s own directors, according to a Department of Agriculture report.

It concluded that Glanbia – one of the country’s largest public limited companies – had taken verbal instructions a non-executive director, Bill Carroll, “to facilitate an incorrect reallocation of milk supplies between two suppliers.”

Mr Carroll, a dairy farmer from outside Clonmel, Co Tipperary, resigned as a director of Glanbia in November in the wake of the controversy.

Letter written on behalf of Simon Coveney to Glanbia on June 4, 2014

An investigation by the Department of Agriculture examined allegations that he had sold almost €300,000 of milk to Glanbia from his Co Tipperary farm using the quota attached to Clongowes Wood College, a well-known private boarding school run by the Jesuits in Co Kildare.

Milk quota rules stipulate that farmers are prohibited from supplying milk that has not been produced by their own cows on their holdings. Anyone who infringes such regulations is liable for substantial fines if they supply more than their quota.

Documents obtained by the Irish Examiner under the Freedom of Information Act show the Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney was highly critical of Glanbia’s role in the controversy.

A report by his officials into milk quota irregularities found Glanbia’s recording system was not operated in accordance with milk quota regulations.

It found the group’s systems were “amenable to alteration on the basis of a verbal instruction, either from a party outside or within the company, and the necessary robust checks and balances were not in place.”

A letter written to Glanbia’s chief executive, Jim Bergin, on behalf of Mr Coveney in June 2014 stated: “It is clear the control systems employed within your company were not, in this instance, of regulatory standard and were contrary to the departmental rules in relation to the administration of milk quotas and that [Glanbia] as a result facilitated a series of non-compliant transactions.”

The department ordered Glanbia to take immediate action to reallocate the milk incorrectly allocated to Clongowes Wood College to Mr Carroll’s account and to collect the appropriate superlevy from him – an amount of €143,000.

It required the company to address control weaknesses in its quota management system and to inform the department exactly what measures it had taken.

The department also instructed Glanbia to arrange and fund independent verification that its control weaknesses had been identified.

Mr Bergin was informed that the matter had also been referred to the Chief State Solicitor to see if a criminal prosecution was warranted.

He replied: “We trust that further action will not be necessary.”

The department was forced to contact Glanbia again last October after it emerged that Mr Carroll had benefitted from the distribution of unused milk quota – known as flexi-milk – to the value of €30,000.

Follow-up letter to Glanbia on Oct 22, 2015

The department’s assistant general secretary, Brendan Gleeson, ordered Glanbia to withdraw any flexi-milk allocation to Mr Carroll and to arrange to collect any outstanding superlevy from him. The letter again expressed Mr Coveney’s “deep concern” about “the manner in which this matter has been dealt with by Glanbia.”

The department instructed Glanbia to redistribute the superlevy collected from Mr Carroll to the 290 famers who had been disadvantaged by about €112 each as a result of the allocation to the form

In a reply on November 6 last year Mr Begin said Glanbia had “at all times taken this matter very seriously and co-operated fully with the department’s investigation.”

The Glanbia chief executive acknowledged that an internal review carried out by the group on foot of the allegations against Mr Carroll had highlighted there was “insufficient documentation in place to support the manual amendments processed by Glanbia milk department.”

However, Mr Bergin also stressed that it was “an isolated incident involving a range of exceptional circumstances.”

During a Dáil debate in November, Mr Coveney said he had accepted the recommendation of his officials that a criminal prosecution of the matter should not be pursued.

The minister declined to reveal the legal advice he had received from the Chief State solicitor but said his officials had regard to the fact that corrective action was taken, there was no financial gain for any of the parties  and a superlevy had been paid.

Sinn Féin TD, Martin Ferris observed the case “stinks to high heaven.”  “This was blatant attempted fraud at the very least,” said the Kerry North TD.

He claimed he had received information that the Chief State Solicitor had recommended the issue be referred to gardaí.

M Coveney said he had been advised by the department’s secretary general, Aidan O’Driscoll, that the facts of the case were “not so clear as to provide a sufficient degree of probability that a prosecution would succeed.”

The Department refused to release documents containing a record of an interview carried out under caution with Mr Carroll.

Catching the Burglars....Or Not.

Seven out of ten of the most serious crimes against property are going unsolved, with non-detection rates in some Garda districts in excess of 80%.

An investigation by The Times has found that only four out of the country’s 96 Garda districts solved more than half of all robberies, burglaries and thefts in their area in 2015.

The figures, published for the first time today, show detection rates at Garda district level for the three main offences involving property — robbery, burglary and theft.

Overall, gardai are successful in solving only 30 per cent of these cases on average, based on official crime figures between January 2013 and the end of September 2015.

The main criteria for classifying an offence as “detected” is when criminal proceedings have been commenced against at least one suspected offender.

The figures reveal a big disparity in the performance of gardaí stationed in 96 districts across the country in catching offenders for such crimes.

In 2015, gardaí based at the five stations within the Leixlip district of Co Kildare had the worst detection rate for robbery, burglary and theft, with less than 14% of all cases solved. The district covers several large towns including Maynooth and Celbridge.

The two other districts in Co Kildare — Naas and Kildare Town — also have comparatively low detection rates, both at about 20%..

Independent TD for Kildare North, Catherine Murphy, , said that the figures were a cause for concern because burglary and theft were among the few crimes that were on the increase in recent years.

Ms Murphy said she believed that there was a clear link between detection rates and Garda manpower levels because Kildare had the lowest number of gardaí of any county in Ireland on a per capita basis.

“The annual policing plan published by An Garda Síochána is a work of fiction, as it does not take into account demographic changes by putting more gardaí into areas where there have been large increases in population, like Kildare,” she said.

Most of the districts with the lowest detection rates are located in Dublin and counties surrounding the capital. They include Clondalkin, Balbriggan and Dun Laoghaire as well as Baltinglass, Co Wicklow and Ashbourne and Trim in Co Meath. Other areas with detection rates of 20% or less include the two Galway districts of Clifden and Salthill.

Two of the four districts where more than 50% of crimes are solved are located in Kerry — Tralee and Listowel.

Gardai based at the nine stations in the Tralee district, which includes the towns of Dingle and Castleisland, had the best detection rate in the country last year, with offenders apprehended in 56% of all property-related crimes.

Detection rates in urban areas are not universally lower than rural stations because gardaí based in two city centre locations in Dublin and Cork — Store Street and Anglesea Street respectively — both made arrests for more than half of all robberies, burglaries and thefts within their districts in the first nine months of last year.

Other districts with above-average detection rates were predominantly based in Munster and included Clonmel, Dungarvan, Ennis, Bandon, Midleton and the Togher district of Cork city.

Over the past three years, gardaí based in the main district in Cork city — Anglesea Street — had the best record in Ireland, solving on average more than 56% of all robberies, burglaries and thefts in its area.

The Garda district of Ashbourne, Co Meath, has the highest rate of unsolved property crimes with an average of 86 per cent of such offences going undetected between 2013 and 2015.

Thirteen other districts have also failed to catch offenders in more than 80% of cases over the period. They include seven districts based in Dublin including Balbriggan, Clondalkin, Terenure and Dun Laoghaire as well as more rural areas such as Baltinglass, Co Wicklow; Thomastown, Co Kilkenny; Clifden, Co Galway and Bruff, Co Limerick.

A Garda spokesman said that the force was introducing a series of new measures designed to improve detection rates, including an enhanced investigator training programme, standardisation of investigative practices, and increased use of data analytics.

He said that detection rates were closely monitored by Garda management.

“In order to protect and support communities, we are implementing a range of initiatives to enhance our investigative capabilities,” he said.

Gardaí plan to increase their use of technology such as CCTV and automatic number plate recognition as well as of forensics and biometrics, including the new DNA database, to solve crime.