Red Cross - Village Magazine





 Red Cross

   as Chairman of

the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) following

Village’s October article calling for him to step

aside in view of issues of corporate governance

and propriety including the mysteriously-de-

layed payment of funds raised for the Asian

tsunami, under his watch. At a meeting on 

November of the central council David Andrews

referred to “wretched scribes”.

The Secretary General, under dispropor-

tionate pressure over a yet-to-be-announced

deﬁcit of , to , Euro, resigned

too. The resignations were treated in the

press as part of a pre-arranged process but

in fact the Chairman had recently been re-ap-

pointed; and the tenure of both the Chairman

and Secretary General had a signiﬁcant time to

run. Neither would have resigned had a crisis

not arisen. In an apparently unrelated move,

Judge Rory McCabe resigned. Since our last

edition, the organisation has decided to make

four out of  staﬀ working on the domestic

side - including the critically important head

of its highly-regarded community services -

compulsorily redundant. Other staﬀ may suf-

fer pay cuts and disimprovements in working

conditions, though Unions are resisting them,

with some success. Meanwhile, the control-

ling executive committee members led by Tony

Lawlor and Des Kavanagh remain in place.

In our October article we drew attention

to the Sisyphean reform process whereby –

just before a report recommending rotation

of the executive committee is published - the

Secretary General moves on; and the process

has to be re-instigated. A report on reform

was produced in November for a meeting of

the central council. The council itself would

become a “General Assembly” and crucially

its membership could only serve two succes-

sive three-year terms before being required

to retire for a year. Sources told Village the

danger with this is that it was a mandate

for calcified existing members of the cen-

tral council to sit out another six years on

the new General Assembly. This would be

unhealthy.

A climate of fear and of distrust between

staﬀ and the Executive Committee prevails,

partly because of the mystery surrounding

the resignations of a number of Secretaries

General; and partly because in the past, where

details of poor governance have been leaked

to the media, key staﬀ have been combatively

interrogated about it.

The IRCS beneﬁts from extraordinary pub-

lic goodwill. Over €, has already been

raised for ﬂood response with expectations of

another €,.

In the Dail on  December Brian O’Shea TD

asked Willie O’Dea, the Minister for Defence,

if he had satisﬁed himself that the IRCS had

in place speciﬁc plans and structures to expe-

ditiously and economically deploy the large

sums of money being collected to deal with the

recent ﬂoods. The Minister said it did.

Nevertheless, despite denials by the

Minister and by the IRCS itself - for example

on TV’s afternoon programme at the begin-

ning of December - where a speciﬁc pledge was

given that funds would be disbursed within 

hours, speciﬁc plans were not in place ten days

later (three weeks after the ﬁrst ﬂoods) – a long

time in disaster relief.

In the case of previous ﬂoods in Ireland

the IRCS simply administered a government-

funded scheme. In the case of the recent ﬂoods,

however, the IRCS has solicited funds for itself

for redistribution. In Mid-December the Irish

Red Cross started accepting applications

from people in need of ﬁnancial assistance. It

published ads saying applicants would not be

means-tested but that an assessment process

would be carried out to determine beneﬁciaries

and amounts. It said payments from the fund

will be considered independently of any com-

pensation or assistance people might get. This

would seem on the face of it to undermine the

basis of needs-based relief. It augurs badly for

the process.

The central issue is that key members of

the executive committee are more interested

in ﬁrst aid and in purchasing ambulances

than in domestic and overseas relief eﬀorts.

Ambulances have cost up to €m annually in

recent years – €, in the last year - and

have often been subsidised, sometimes even

insisted upon, by central government includ-

ing by its Galway-based Minister, Eamon O’

Cuív. Ambulances had for some time before

its recent liquidation been bought without the

beneﬁt of any proper competitive tendering

process from Tom Hogan Motors in Galway.

Mr Hogan is a friend of Des Kavanagh, former

IRCS Treasurer, though there is no reason to

think that the friendship did anything other

than work to the advantage of the IRCS.

The Irish Red Cross, worthy as it is and

despite so many excellent volunteers on the

ground, unrivalled public goodwill and the

beginnings of institutional reform, has a long

way to travel to fulﬁl the mandate and the repu-

tational premium it enjoys in Ireland.

 :  

   





 Red Cross



“As long ago as 1999 nine

of the staff came together

on RTÉ News to call on the

Government to set up an

investigation into the running

of the charity.”

Shoddy governance, low staff

morale and a rash of inexplicable

resignations at the Red Cross

mean it’s time for a change.

MICHAEL SMIT H

      







 







Village,







     

        













Village                      





     







                                             

                                               

                                             













                                            





 







                           













  

  





  

   

    





        

Village













    







ILLUSTRATION: GETTY IMAGES

Chairman and Secretary General resign following Village article

Villages November article