A complaint has been submitted to South Dublin County Council following allegations against Fine Gael councillor Baby Pereppadan, owner of and shareholder in a recruitment company that has reportedly charged foreign nurses thousands of euro in “agency fees” to work in Ireland.
People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, along with a number of PBP councillors, submitted the complaint against the former Mayor of South Dublin, as well as his son, Councillor Britto Pereppadan, who TheJournal.ie reports as owning a bank account into which a sum equivalent to €3,000 was paid in one instance.
In the letter to South Dublin County Council, the PBP members say they are writing to complain about “breaches of the Code of Conduct for Councillors by Councillors Baby Pereppadan and Britto Pereppadan”.
They claim that the Tallaght councillors appear to be in breach of multiple provisions in the code of conduct, including those that exhort the elected representatives to “act with integrity to uphold public service values” and to “act in a way that enhances public trust and confidence”.
In addition, they urge the council to “initiate an investigation” into the matter “as soon as possible”.
The Journal Investigates team spoke to three nurses who said they had paid thousands of euros in agency fees to Pereppadan’s Angel Care Consultancy Limited, on top of the standard expenses nurses face when coming to Ireland, such as work-, language-, and travel-related fees.
Baby Pereppadan co-founded Angel Care Consultancy Limited in 2022 with businessman Babu Valooran Kochuvarkey, but said that he was “totally unaware” that such fees were being charged by the company when it was put to him.
Under the Protection of Employees (Temporary Agency Work) Act 2012, it is an offence for an employment agency to charge “an individual fee in respect of the making of any arrangement for the purpose of that individual’s being employed”.
While Mr Pereppadan denied any knowledge of the transactions when questioned, claiming to have no involvement in the day-to-day activities of the company, The Journal maintains that it has evidence that he represented Angel Care in a business deal with an employer in the last year.
Meanwhile, Babu Valooran Kochuvarkey stated that all money charged to nurses was related to application and other related expenses.
Britto, into whose account just over €3,000 was transferred by one of the nurses, claimed that Valooran owed him money for a personal debt and that he wasn’t aware of how the money was obtained.
The nurse who transferred the money to Britto’s Indian account said that she became aware that the fees were illegal under employment law once she arrived in Ireland. As a result, she made a complaint to Indian authorities, who forwarded the matter to the police.
A complaint has also been filed with gardaí, according to The Journal.
According to The Journal’s investigation, at a meeting with a potential client in July, Baby Pereppadan claimed that his political connections would speed up the recruitment process, allegedly referencing his close proximity to Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader, Simon Harris.
The three nurses who came forward each paid over €3,000 in agency fees, in addition to the other related expenditures, but have since decided collectively to resign from their posts over working conditions, a decision they made in recent months.
They cited a lack of help from Valooran and the agency as adding to the difficulty of the situation.