Majority of Waterford disability charity's board resigns amid WRC case

All bar one board member of the Waterford Intellectual Disability Association (WIDA) has resigned amid a workplace relations commission case regarding the alleged mistreatment of employees who made protected disclosures.

This comes just one year after a HSE audit found that “extensive conflict between board members and management” had occurred in the organisation, which had breached spending rules when significant sums of HSE funding was used for legal and consultancy fees, instead of for the charity’s service.

In a four-week period, the majority of the voluntary board of the charity has resigned, starting with former director John Mitchell, who resigned on November 21 of this year. The same day, the trustee chairperson Eamonn Coady and fellow board member Sharon Devereux resigned. One week later, another Director Nick Donnelly resigned from his position. Another board member, Linda Harte, had resigned in August.

In the ensuing weeks, the secretary William Power resigned from his position after appointing two new directors in Adrian Aherne and Jim Ryan. Of the Board of Directors in place in August, only one member remains, Noel Power.

Adrian Ahern, who works as the Chief Executive Officer of Leopardstown Park Hospital, is an HSE employee and holds a directorship of the Order Of Malta Ireland, was installed as a director of the company. Jim Ryan has also been installed as a director of the company, in addition to holding a position as a director of the DLR Drug and Alcohol Task Force, and is the former HSE Mental Health Head of Operations, Quality and Service Improvement.

The Charities Regulator, which has oversight over WIDA, said that it “does not comment on individual charities. However, we can confirm that we have been liaising with the charity and the HSE.” 

The Health Service Executive stated to Waterford News & Star that “the welfare of residents and service users is a priority for the HSE.” 

“The HSE has arrangements with many agencies in the care sector to provide services. This is in accordance with service level agreements and the HSE liaises with such agencies on an ongoing basis,” it said, but did not answer queries regarding the HSE’s involvement in choosing new board members or whether the organisation was concerned by the en-masse resignation of the charity’s board.

The Waterford Intellectual Disability Association has been approached for comment on the matter. 

Responding to a query as to why members of the Board of Directors had resigned, a spokesperson said: “There is a new BOD in place.” 

The charity operates crucial supports for services for adults and children with an intellectual disability and/or autism across Waterford. The charity, which is a Section 32 organisation, has 133 staff members and receives almost all of its income from its service level agreement (SLA) with the HSE – which amounted to €7,457,816 last year.

It is understood that a number of WIDA staff members and former board members have raised concerns and made protected disclosures about the charity’s board of directors to the HSE. The concerns mainly concern improperly procured expenditure of money on legal and management consultancy services, which staff members believe has directly impacted their ability to provide necessary services to its users; improperly procured expenses, which are not funded by the HSE, taken from money, which is intended for the care of its service users or incurs liabilities. The Waterford Intellectual Disability Association ran a deficit of €744,836 in the previous calendar year.

“Significant conflict between the board and management” 

The investigation by the HSE’s internal audit team into WIDA, which found breaches of spending rules relating to a significant amount of HSE funding - which was used for consultancy and legal fees, was revealed by Waterford News & Star last year.

The internal audit, relating to spending controls, found there was “significant conflict between the board and management” at the centre.

With regard to legal and consultancy procurement by WIDA, the auditors highlighted that legal advice from January to May 2023 amounted to €111,546.19, while consultancy invoices from January 2022 to May 2023 amounted to €72,775.28. The total legal and consultancy expenditure between January 2022, and May 2023 was €184,321.47.

A series of protected disclosures were made to the HSE and HIQA regarding the use of the service’s money on such services.

“This is the total known amount as advised to the internal audit, but the level of expenditure will grow substantially, including invoices for work commissioned but not yet invoiced/ completed, and for the as yet unknown costs of potential legal action and advice costs,” noted the auditors in the report at the time.

The auditors noted that as the Board is “effectively” solely funded by the HSE, the use of external advisers to attempt to resolve internal disputes “is using public funds, but not for the benefit of service users, and is breaching budgetary control”, Waterford News & Star reported.

The auditors detailed “extensive conflict between board members and the management team” in the report and said it had resulted in “a wide-ranging IR (industrial relations) dispute and proposals from the board to restructure including redundancy arrangements for two managers and a new CEO role”.

The “wide-ranging IR dispute” led, earlier this year, to a High Court case seeking an embargo on the appointment of a CEO to the charity during an ongoing Workplace Relations Commission case taken under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014.

The Board of Directors of WIDA agreed not to appoint a CEO to the business during the tenure of the WRC case and agreed to pay for the legal costs of the applicant and their union.

Prior to this agreement, two former board members of the charity wrote to the Charities Regulator this year to raise concerns that the charity “is insolvent as their liabilities far exceed their ability to meet them.” 

“We fear that WIDA is in a state of imminent collapse and we worry that our loved ones will be scattered to the four winds throughout Ireland making it impossible for their elderly and infirm parents to stay in contact with their loved ones,” the letter said.