The chairwoman of the Irish Seal Sanctuary (ISS) has said the charity’s members are “devastated” after its founder and board director allegedly persuaded a donor to withdraw a €10,000 contribution.
Last week, a woman sent a cheque for that amount to the sanctuary with a card addressed to Brendan Price, the charity’s founder. The card said she hoped the money “might help” the organisation with its problems.
The sanctuary, which has been rescuing seals for more than 20 years, is homeless after a dispute with its landlord resulted in it being locked out of a site in Courtown, Co Wexford, earlier this year.
When Pauline Beades, a director of the charity, went to the woman’s Dublin home to thank her for the donation on Thursday, she was informed that the cheque had been “stopped”. According to three sources at the charity, the woman said Price told her the board wanted to use the €10,000 to pay bills, while he wanted it to be used “for the animals”.
A board meeting of the charity’s directors scheduled for Thursday evening was cancelled after angry exchanges among members. Several say they are “heartbroken” by the withdrawal of the donation. The organisation has debts of about €5,000, which include a bill for fish fed to recovering seals.
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Veronika Bahnikova, the chairwoman, confirmed that the cheque had been cancelled. “When we approached the donor to see how she would like the money to be spent, we were told, ‘Sorry, I spoke to Brendan and he advised me that the money wouldn’t be used for animals at the moment and that it would be better to cancel the cheque until the organisation is ready to have animals.’ ”
“We wanted to have her agreement on how the money would be spent and we had a proposal,” said Bahnikova. She added that volunteers were devastated by its withdrawal. “We could have used the money to help the charity and the donor would have been happy with [our purpose].”
Price said Bahnikova’s statement was “largely inaccurate”. “It’s a spin job,” he said. “The money is purely on hold. It’s what you’d call ring-fenced. It’s up to the ISS to produce [a plan] for what it wants to do with it.”