Leech role in €4.5m contract to be probed

MONICA LEECH’S involvement in the awarding of a €4.5 million contract to so-called ‘friends of Fianna Fáil’ is expected to be probed by an Oireachtas watchdog this morning.

Martin Cullen has to wait until tomorrow at least to find out if a the State ethics body is to probe the awarding of PR contracts to the minister’s political associate.

Today the Dáil Public Accounts Committee will question Department of the Environment officials on the expenditure of up to €50 million on the aborted roll-out of electronic voting. The majority of this spending took place during Mr Cullen’s tenure in the department.

Members of the committee are also expected to quiz the Department’s general secretary, Niall Callan, about the role of Ms Leech in the awarding of the e-voting PR contract to a consortium involving Q4 Public Relations, a company branded by opposition parties as “friends of Fianna Fáil”.

The PAC will broadly base its inquiries on a damning independent assessment of the expenditure on the e-voting debacle by Comptroller and Auditor General John Purcell who said the scheme should have been subjected to more rigorous cost/benefit analysis.

Uniquely in the C&AG’s annual report for 2003, the chapter focusing on electronic voting contains a series of bite-size and hard-hitting conclusions.

Yet, the report also concludes it was “not unreasonable” for the Department of the Environment to proceed with the project as it did on the basis of the results of the testing and pilot projects.

Nonetheless, the C&AG pointed out the decision to purchase an extra 400 machines for the Nice Referendum before they had been modified to meet new requirements led to an avoidable cost of €680,000.

Meanwhile the Standards in Public Office Commission is to meet tomorrow to consider whether to hold an investigation into the appointment of Ms Leech by Mr Cullen during his term in the Office of Public Works and the Department of the Environment.

The commission is to decide if there are grounds for investigating whether ethics legislation was breached when contracts were awarded but it is not clear when it will announce its decision.

Last week, a separate inquiry, conducted by former Revenue Commissioners chairman Dermot Quigley, found no evidence of impropriety on the minister’s part but the suggestion of Ms Leech’s name for the position risked the perception of impropriety.