I trusted Console charity after my sister committed suicide – now I realise they’re financially corrupt

On the morning on the sixth of June 2016, I walked through Dublin’s Connolly Station, overcome with emotion. I was setting out to participate in the VHI Women’s Mini Marathon and so, it seemed were the vast majority of the people walking through the station. Women of all ages were there: daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, cousins, friends, wives and girlfriends. The crowd was a rainbow of multi-coloured t-shirts bearing the names of various charitable organisations. There were a few ladies wearing ordinary athletic gear who were simply taking part because they enjoyed running, but the vast majority were there in order to raise money for cause they believed in. Walking through the crowd, it struck me how many different issues affect the lives of different people. I couldn’t help but feel somewhat overwhelmed, surrounded as I was by so many strong women who refused to let the crosses they bore weigh too heavily on them. Instead these were the kind of women who wanted to make a positive change.

I was participating that day along with my mother, my aunts, cousins and partners of family members, in order to raise money for Console, a charity which runs a hotline for people in suicidal crisis and offers counselling to people bereaved by suicide. My family and I had received excellent support from Console in the wake of the loss of my sister, Fiona, in October of last year. It was the worst thing I could ever imagine happening and the lives of the people who knew Fiona will never be the same again but the help we received brought light to an incredibly dark time. We firmly believed in the value of Console’s work and we wanted to repay the charity for their wonderful help. We were delighted to exceed our target of £1,000 and raised £5,705.60.

The event itself was wonderful. After a brief rain shower, it was a perfect day. I was with so many wonderful women, walking through Dublin in glorious sunshine and I felt as if we were doing something that would make a real positive change in people’s lives.

Only weeks later, RTE’s Prime Time investigates revealed enormous financial corruption within the company. Feeling let down by a charitable organisation is especially disappointing because you feel comfortable expecting a high moral standard from an organisation that is supposed to be about helping people in times of need and not about making a profit. According to The Irish Times, Console founder Paul Kelly, along with his wife, Patricia, and son, Tim, generated credit card bills of almost €500,000 and received salaries and cars to the value of another €500,000.

They used money intended for the charity on trips to New Zealand and Australia, on tickets to rugby matches and on dental work among many other private expenditures. They also lied about what funds would be used for and flouted regulations about having members of the same family on a board of directors by using Kelly’s wife’s maiden name.

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Kelly’s tendency for deception pre-dates Console. In 1983, he posed as a doctor and worked for three weeks under false pretences in a Dublin hospital. He pleaded guilty and received only a nominal punishment because of the Probation Act. In 1989, he founded an organisation called Christian Development Services that offered cheaper counselling for people unable to afford it. It was discovered that CDS had been evading taxes and owed £100,000 to the Revenue Commissioners. Additionally, Kelly had posed as a priest to raise funds for CDS and falsely named former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern and then Minister for labour as a trustee.

All of this is concrete proof that Kelly – who is currently in a psychiatric hospital himself – should not have been trusted with large sums of money. Charities and companies of any kind should not be able to get away with this kind of deception. More transparency in regards to financial matters of such organisations is desperately needed.

What confuses me the most about this whole, horrible ordeal is how, Paul Kelly, who like myself lost a sister to suicide, could live with himself after taking this money, given in good faith to help families like his own and people like his sister. In spite of the scandal, Console have done amazing work but the avarice of Kelly and his family has forever tainted the organisation.

People will no longer want to donate to Console and it’s possible the charity will not survive – which means there will be one less place for people contemplating suicide to turn.