Paul and Patricia Kelly used the Console charity to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Paul and Patricia Kelly, the disgraced founders of Console, have been ordered to repay €150,000 in state grant money given to the defunct charity.
Paul Kelly resigned as the CEO of Console last year after an RTÉ Investigates programme titled Broken Trust showed irregularities in the charity's finances and how accounts were altered to obscure how the directors of the company were paid, and how they received other benefits.
The Department of Foreign Affairs has now issued letters to the Kellys, demanding full repayment of Emigrant Support Programme grants - totalling €150,889 - which were given to the suicide bereavement charity over three years (2013, 2014 and 2015).
The grants are given to organisations that give support and advice services to Irish emigrants abroad.
Paul Kelly, his wife Patricia and their son Tim received almost €500,000 in salaries and cars between 2012 and 2014.
Moreover, the trio used 11 company credit cards in the same time period in which almost another €500,000 was spent on groceries, designer clothes and foreign trips.
Those credit cards were used for...
- Trips to Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and other destinations
- Designer clothes from Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren, among others
- Tickets to the Rugby World Cup
- Dental work
- Groceries, totalling €24,659 over three years
- Restaurants - between them, the trio spent €32,900 on eating out between 2012 and 2014
Liquidator Tom Murray is coming to the end of his work winding up the organisation, with hundreds of thousands of euros still reportedly unaccounted for.
