Former general secretary of the IFA Pat Smith’s reported salary from the IFA in 2013 included a €30,000 fee for being director of IFA Telecom Ltd. The IFA has two limited company subsidiaries, which give two very different stories – one of failure in Buywayz Limited and the other IFA Telecom, an ongoing success (see right).

However, an Irish Farmers Journal investigation has revealed that the IFA appears to have part ownership of an additional company, CP Community Publishing Limited. Set up in August 2000, the annual return for the company for the period to 12 March 2002 shows Sean Breen, Adrian Taheny and Pat Smith listed as directors and joint shareholders of this company. Sean Breen was director of Buywayz up until August 2015.

Shares

Sean Breen confirmed to the Irish Farmers Journal that Pat Smith held the shares in trust for the IFA while Adrian Taheny held shares in trust for FBD. He also said Pat Smith did not receive any directors’ fees or remuneration from the company. The shareholders appear to have invested about €89,000 in the company. For the first number of years of its existence, the company was audited by John O’Callaghan & Co with an address at the Irish Farm Centre. The company provides the text messaging services that IFA has used and continue to use.

Talking to the IFA yesterday (Wednesday), the organisation was unaware of the links despite using the company which was newly branded as Digeco Systems. Nearly 1.9m text messages were sent out to members at 3.8c each. IFA paid out €49,637 in fees to the company so far this year.

The annual financial statements submitted to the CRO give limited information. Only abridged accounts are filed. From the beginning, the company invested in tangible fixed assets. The information available in the accounts is very scanty up to 2006. However, the 2006 accounts show that the company had invested in tangible fixed assets of €175,000 of which €148,000 had been depreciated. Most of this investment was in software development. The 2014 accounts show that the company had invested in software and other fixed assets to the tune of 250,000 up to that time.

The filed balance sheets through the years show liabilities such as VAT and PAYE, indicating that the company has been quite active throughout.

Pat Smith has eight directorships in total, many of them due to his role as general secretary of the IFA. He is a director since 2009 of the Agricultural Trust, where directors do not receive payment. He has been a director of both the FBD Trust and Farm Business Developments since 2010 and is also a director of the Irish Farm Centre, the company that owns and runs the farm centre. As well as IFA Telecom, Pat is a director of Buywayz Limited, a second subsidiary of IFA, which has not done as well. The subsidiaries and associated companies and business dealings are an issue that Con Lucey should be delving into as part of his new audit and corporate governance brief.