Davy got just €615 for report on lottery licence

DAVY STOCKBROKERS was paid just €615 by the Government for a report setting out options for the sale of the next National Lottery licence.

The report, commissioned by the Department of Public Expenditure, was compiled by two senior employees at Davy Corporate Finance in February and March.

Details of the payment – an unusually low rate for external consultancy work – were given by Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin in response to a parliamentary question by Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins regarding reports commissioned externally by the department.

When contacted by The Irish Times, a Davy spokesman said it was not the firm’s policy to comment on the commercial terms given to clients.

However, he said the fee should be viewed in the context of recent comments by the Department of Finance’s secretary general, John Moran, regarding private sector companies offering to do their bit for “Ireland Inc”.

At the launch of the department’s strategy plan last month, Mr Moran spoke of the limited resources available to his team in the current climate and how his department had been “overwhelmed” by the number of private firms, particularly in Dublin, offering to help.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Public Expenditure confirmed the €615 figure was the full amount paid to Davy for the work.

She said the document had set out a number of options for the Government regarding the duration of the next lottery licence and “other key issues to ensure the return to the State is optimised”.

“Davy has been engaged, and its work is to complement the work and analysis already being undertaken by the department regarding the appropriate structure for the award of the licence.”

The fee appears to be a major discount on those once charged by the consultancy firm during the boom. In 2001, for example, the Department of Health paid Davy Corporate Finance and law firm William Fry €553,493 for a report on the strategic options for the VHI Healthcare board.

Last April Mr Howlin announced the next lottery licence would be awarded for an extended 20-year period in an attempt to secure the State an upfront payment. The new licence will be awarded early next year to the winner of a bidding process, scheduled to begin in October.

Some of the proceeds have been earmarked for the proposed National Children’s Hospital.

Apart from the Davy payment, Mr Howlin also gave details of two other amounts paid by his department to external consultants since February 2011.

These included a €41,043 fee paid to RedC for a project undertaken for the department and presented to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Investigations, Oversight and Petitions.

Consultancy group Mercer was paid €1,210 for data used for input to the Government’s Organisational Review Programme.