Ministers warned about aid worker, says ex-board member

THE MAN who first investigated Kenyan-based Irish aid worker Dr Mike Meegan 25 years ago says he alerted Government aid ministers about some of his concerns.

Dr Vincent Kenny, an Icross board member at the time, said he told Tom Kitt, Liz O’Donnell and Conor Lenihan, all of whom served as ministers of state for overseas development, that they should think seriously about involvement with Mr Meegan’s charity work in Kenya.

Dr Kenny said he met the ministers at functions and told them that Mr Meegan, who had a PhD from an unaccredited college, was misrepresenting his qualifications.

Mr Lenihan then refused a speaking engagement at a function involving Mr Meegan, he said.

Ms O’Donnell, who was aid minister from 1997 to 2002, was supportive of Mr Meegan’s work and visited his projects while on an official visit to Kenya in 2001. Ms O’Donnell said last night she wasn’t aware there were any issues in relation to Mr Meegan’s qualifications until they surfaced in the media three years ago.

Mr Kitt, who was minister from 2002 to 2004, said he had no dealings with Mr Meegan and no recollection of talking to Dr Kenny about the charity.

Irish Aid made grants totalling €364,000 to Icross in 2004 and 2005 for health and HIV programmes in Kenya but stopped funding after an audit uncovered problems.

Last week, the High Court refused Mr Meegan an injunction preventing a Sunday newspaper from publishing any material alleging he sexually assaulted or abused anyone.

Some of the allegations mentioned in court were first investigated in 1986 by Dr Kenny, who resigned from Icross after the board disagreed on what to do about them.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Mr Meegan rejected the allegations made against him and said he was the victim of an orchestrated campaign of vilification by rivals in the aid business. “If I thought for a minute I was guilty of any of these things I wouldn’t be sitting in Kenya. I would be long gone,” he said.

Mr Meegan is seeking access to the funds raised on his behalf in Ireland but the chairman of the Irish arm of Icross, Tim Bourke, said it was being wound up and an application had been made to the Commission for Charitable Bequests to take over the remaining funds.

Mr Bourke said Icross Ireland has €266,000 in the bank and was also in receipt of substantial bequests but was unable to function or file accounts because he was the only remaining director.Icross Kenya was a separate legal entity beyond the control of the Irish organisation, he said.

Mr Bourke defended the organisation’s handling of the matter, saying he was previously unaware of the allegations currently being made. In 2006, he travelled to Nairobi to investigate allegations of bullying and spoke to staff, but they denied there was a problem.

A subsequent audit led to the freezing of funds and the repayment of a grant of almost €100,000 to Irish Aid.

Mr Bourke said he and the board of Icross were not aware of the 1986 investigation carried out by Dr Kenny. “If we had evidence of what we know now, it would never have been set up.”

Dr Joe Barnes, the respected former professor of tropical medicine in the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland who founded Icross with Mr Meegan, said Mr Meegan had done “amazing work” in Africa over three decades and was currently helping to alleviate food shortages in Kenya as well as running health clinics.

Dr Barnes (95) acknowledged Irish Aid had uncovered a “lacuna” of missing funding but said this had not been attributed to fraud. A Kenyan staff member was fired afterwards for “putting his hand in the till”, he said.