Minister defends appointing €1,200 a day Leech

ENVIRONMENT Minister Dick Roche yesterday staunchly defended the appointment of Monica Leech as a €1,200 a day PR adviser to his predecessor, Martin Cullen.

Mr Roche confirmed the public relations company, Drury Communications, was paid over €380,000 for work on the National Spatial Strategy, although Ms Leech was also involved in that project.

Fine Gael environment spokesman Fergus O’Dowd said the €303,000 paid to Monica Leech Communications could have been used to hire six advisers.

Also yesterday, Mr Roche said he was satisfied all the advisers in his department have been fully independent in their advice to him on the review of the Retail Planning Guidelines.

“Yes I am and I do not involve special advisers in my decisions on this,” he said.

Defending Ms Leech’s record, Mr Roche said she had carried out good work for the Department of the Environment.

“I met the consultant in question twice. I record that I was impressed by her professionalism, capacity and, in particular, her ability to render complex issues more easily accessible,” he said.

But Mr O’Dowd questioned the necessity to involve Ms Leech in the National Spatial Strategy when Drury Communications were already on site.

“When the minister, Deputy Cullen, appeared on an RTÉ programme this week, he specifically said that he needed a communications specialist given the scale of the challenge of the spatial strategy and the need to roll-out the strategy.

“Given that Drury Communications was already employed doing that job, what sense did it make to bring in somebody new who knew nothing about the spatial strategy? Drury Communications had two years’ experience of dealing with it, yet it was not asked to do this work,” he said.

According to Mr Roche, in the run-up to the finalisation and launch of the NSS, it was decided to intensify the communications campaign. Additional work was started on the presentation aspects of the strategy, media briefings, publicity and other briefing material. Ms Leech was actively involved in this work and attended related team meetings, the minister said.

“In addition to work on the spatial strategy, work was carried out on the race against waste campaign and there was a range of issues relating to steering that campaign and communications relating to it. Work was done in connection with the Environment Council,” he said.