Council’s park sale breached guidelines

LIMERICK City Council breached Department of Finance guidelines in the manner it sold off a part of the People’s Park, according to the Finance Minister Brian Cowen in a letter to Junior Health Minister Tim O’Malley.

The council completed the sale of a 0.44-acre site at the park for €1.57 million to Reidy Civil Engineering earlier this year having agreed on a sale in 2002 at a time the council did not even own the site.

The sale was not put out to public tender and a slightly larger adjoining site raised e2.85m when it was sold to another developer on the open market.

A letter obtained by the Irish Examiner sent by Mr Cowen to Junior Minister O’Malley clearly indicates that public procurement guidelines were not adhered to by the city council in the private sale of the site to Reidy Civil Engineering.

In the letter dated July 25, 2005, Mr Cowen replying to a letter from Mr O’Malley about the sale wrote: “In your letter you enclose an extract from my department’s Code of Practice for the Governance of State Bodies.

“That code was designed to provide obligatory corporate governance guidelines for commercial semi-State bodies but would also, where deemed appropriate, be applied to non-commercial State bodies as well. I would, however, like to point out that my department’s 1994 Public Procurement Guidelines state in relation to the disposal or letting of government property: ‘The disposal or letting of property should be dealt with by competitive tendering or by auction. This approach provides a disposal mechanism which is both transparent and is likely to achieve a fair price’. These guidelines are applicable to local authorities.”

Limerick City Council has stated there was nothing unusual in deciding against putting the site on the open market and said the sale price was reached on a ‘pro-rata’ basis relative to the sale of the adjoining site.

The council was dealing with Reidy Civil Engineering before it completed the purchase of the site for €150,000 from the People’s Park Trustees and the Earl of Limerick.

Minister of State O’Malley has called for the Minister for the Environment to appoint somebody of the calibre of a retired judge to investigate the disposal of the park site by the council.

Independent City Councillor Jim Long - who first brought the matter to public attention - wants a public meeting of the council to discuss the topic.

He said he has been asked a number of times by officials to meet them privately and has refused.

Limerick City Manager Tom Mackey has said he is satisfied the disposal of the land had been carried out properly.