Arthur Beesley, Political Reporter

28 January 2005

The Taoiseach is to withdraw from Ministers the power to directly hire private-sector public relations consultants, in an attempt to end the controversy over the award of lucrative contracts to an associate of the Minister for Transport, Mr Cullen. The Taoiseach made it clear that Mr Cullen would remain in his post after an official inquiry into the contracts secured by his political associate, Ms Monica Leech, cleared the Minister of wrongdoing.

However, former Revenue chairman Mr Dermot Quigley said Mr Cullen had left himself open to a "perception of impropriety" by proposing his supporter for work in bodies under his political control.

The Opposition last night said the Minister's position had been seriously undermined after Mr Quigley cited shortcomings in the supervision of Ms Leech's work for the Office of Public Works and the Department of the Environment.

The Minister still faces the possibility of a full-scale investigation by the Standards in Public Office Commission, which will decide next week whether it will proceed with a formal inquiry into the contracts.

The initiation of such a process would be damaging to the Minister given the precedent set in 2001 when the minister of state for agriculture at the time, Mr Ned O'Keeffe, resigned at the outset of an inquiry into his declarations of interest to the Dáil.

Mr Quigley said the OPW should have done more to document the business needs and urgent requirement for Ms Leech's work in Waterford, which is the Minister's constituency. "I was unable to establish a precise parallel for a similar arrangement for consultancy services for any other regional location," he wrote.

Mr Quigley also said that Ms Leech's contract with the Department of the Environment had turned out to be "well in excess" of the threshold at which an EU procurement process should be triggered.

He noted that Ms Leech had placed advertisements for Mr Cullen's election campaign in 2002 but said there was "no formal prohibition on an external consultant being involved with or on behalf of a political party".

Mr Quigley called for 12 specific measures to strengthen the procurement regime in a series of recommendations that led to an immediate commitment from the Taoiseach to set up a special unit to evaluate all requests from Ministers and Ministers of State for advice from PR consultancies.

"I want as far as is possible to ensure that not only the contracts are awarded properly but also that they're seen and believed to be awarded correctly, too," said Mr Ahern.

"Martin Cullen continues as Minister. I just hope he can give his 100 per cent attention to all of the issues on his agenda, because he has a lot of them."

Mr Cullen said he had been vindicated but added that there were "lessons for everybody" in the report. The controversy was marked by a pattern of exaggeration and distortion, he said.

"I have always known that I behaved properly and that the public interest was not damaged in any way," he said.

However, Fine Gael claimed that a pattern had emerged which showed Mr Cullen immediately demanding additional communications advice whenever he arrived in a Government body and suggesting Ms Leech for the job.

The report said the secretary general in the Department of the Environment, Mr Niall Callan, did not express dissenting views "either orally or in writing to the Minister" about Ms Leech's contract.