McHugh’s actions ‘left a scar’ on Poker Society

The chairperson of the Poker Society, Dean McGee, has said that Michael McHugh “left a scar and damaged” the society.

McHugh, who it was revealed last week had been masquerading as a student for the past two years after failing part of his course was the chairperson of Poker Society last year and the PRO this year.

McHugh had collected €765 from the Poker Society to pay for tickets to the Clubs and Societies ball before collecting the money for individual tickets from members of the Poker Society.

However, after he failed to lodge this money into the Poker Society bank account McGee contacted Damien Rhatigan, who was the society’s representative on the SPC on December 13 last year, telling him that, “we need to get some things sorted out.”

At this point, McHugh was also an representative on the SPC. He eventually resigned from his position on March 16, after an official investigation began into the missing money.

In the initial email, which the College View has seen, McGee told Rhatigan: “I have pushed Michael as far as I can as chairperson, however I have seen no progress. I am reporting this matter to yourself to see if you can resolve these matters before it has to escalate.”

A series of emails then continued between Rhatigan and McGee. According to McGee he, “pushed and pushed the SPC on this matter and got nowhere.”

At one point the Poker Society was offered, by Rhatigan, a loan from Film Soc, which McGee turned down classing it as only a “temporary fix.”

McGee says that because of the need to have a proper cash flow for the society, not having access to this money made it impossible to properly function.

On January 25, McGee wrote to Rhatigan to say that he had, “sought legal advice and pending the results of your internal investigation… I will be contacting the Garda for stolen money and proceeding with a civil case against Michael.”

Magee was then told on February 18 by Rhatigan that the money was “accounted for” and had been used to pay Poker Society debts. This was the last email that McGee received before the SPC investigation began into the money, three months on from when McGee first reported the missing money.

According to McGee, “questions need to be asked as to why it took the SPC so long to deal with the matter from when we originally reported it.”

He says: “In the last academic year he sat as chairperson which makes the mind wonder if any strange dealings happened then.”

Last week, after McHugh’s status was revealed, the chair of the SPC, Jennifer Tweed sent out a statement to all members of societies in DCU. She says this was done, “to make our work as transparent as possible.”

She says: “We wanted to make sure that everyone knew what was going on; the SPC is after all representing the interests of all societies and students involved in these societies.”

According to the statement, McHugh was questioned by the SPC about the €765 and, “assured us that the money had been paid on behalf of Poker Society for equipment rental.”

However, according to McGee, the “SPC never contacted us as a committee to see if this was true or not.”

He says: “I think that the SPC should have acted quicker when I reported the missing money back at the end of November, start of December – if this had been handled quicker and linked with the SU I think that the issues with Michael nominating candidates could have been avoided.”

Posting on Facebook, Alan Keegan, the Students’ Union president told McGee: “You have bitched about [the SPC] in Poker Soc emails and on Boards, but really I think they have dealt with this in the best possible way they could have. Stop looking for attention with your silly posts and let them do what they were elected to do.”

At the Casino ball, which took place last month, for which McHugh ran the gambling aspect, Poker Society was asked for the use of their equipment.

However, McGee says that, he “made it abundantly clear that Poker wanted no involvement with the night for various reasons, one of the reasons being that I did not trust Michael with our equipment which is quite expensive.”

He says that he, “received an email… from a member of our society who said that he dealt at the Casino Ball however he was never paid for it. He informed me that he could not get in contact with Michael.”