A top executive at IDA Ireland admitted his colleagues “lied” about meeting a foreign investor so that the State agency could avoid giving credit for new jobs to a rival organisation with which the Government had asked it to co-operate.
The incident, in which an IDA executive falsely claimed to have met representatives of Californian digital marketer Silverpop, is outlined in emails and confidential transcripts of arbitration proceedings between IDA Ireland and Connect Ireland, a company set up by tech entrepreneur Terry Clune.
Connect Ireland is a private sector initiative set up with the Government’s imprimatur to help the IDA source foreign investment for the State from up-and-coming companies. It was established during the last crash following the 2012 Global Economic Forum in Farmleigh in Dublin, in response to a Government callout for private sector help to help revive the post-Celtic Tiger economy.
As part of the Government-backed initiative Succeed in Ireland, Mr Clune’s company was contracted by the IDA to provide investment leads by tapping into Ireland’s business diaspora. It was to be paid €4,000 for each new job created, as long as the IDA was not already wooing the company concerned.
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However, some senior IDA executives viewed Connect Ireland as a rival to the State investment agency and sought to stymie its influence, legal documents suggest.
The row over Silverpop is one of a slew of disputes between IDA and Connect Ireland over which organisation was to get the formal credit for jobs leads. Connect Ireland says it helped create 7,000 jobs but has only been paid for fewer than 600.
An arbitrator earlier this year found that certain IDA executives had manipulated the deal between the two organisations, but he did not find the IDA as a whole had breached the agreement.
Lawyers for Connect Ireland produced emails from 2014 between IDA executives in which they discussed falsely claiming to have already met Silverpop so that Connect Ireland, which had suggested the company, did not get the credit for a fresh jobs lead.
“I could say I met someone at a networking event but haven’t formally met the company yet? Red light it and just say I am in contact? What do you think?” one mid-ranking IDA executive asked her boss. “Red light it and keep close to it,” the more senior executive responded.
Connect Ireland’s lawyers alleged this showed they were “colluding in a lie”. When confronted with these emails, Brian Keating, the IDA executive in charge of the initiative, agreed his colleagues had discussed a “lie”. He said the IDA executive who proposed making up the contact may have “felt under pressure” to keep the lead: “I would say that she is looking to misrepresent the facts… we [the IDA] couldn’t stand over somebody actually saying that.”
Mr Keating, who has since been posted to Australia, did not respond to a request for comment from The Irish Times, while the IDA said the arbitrator’s “overall conclusion” was that the agency “was acting honestly”.
