Ethics watchdog criticises minister for advertisement appearance

JUNIOR Minister Tom Parlon has received a rap on the knuckles from the State body which monitors the conduct of public office holders.

Mr Parlon, a former Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) president, provoked controversy last year after appearing in newspaper advertisements for an animal-feed product manufactured by his neighbour, John Grennan.

Mr Parlon defended the advert and stressed he had neither sought nor received payment for it.

But Fine Gael lodged a complaint with the Standards in Public Office Commission, saying he had demeaned his office.

In its annual report yesterday, the commission indicated that Mr Parlon had not breached the Ethics Acts, and an investigation under that legislation had not been necessary.

However, he had contravened the spirit of the separate Code of Conduct for Office Holders, the commission found.

“The Standards Commission wrote to Minister Parlon and expressed its view that a serving office holder should not be directly associated with the endorsement of a particular commercial product, unless such is required in the performance by the office holder of his/her official functions,” the report said.

“The minister was also told that his actions were not in keeping with the spirit of the Code of Conduct for Office Holders.”

Mr Parlon said he fully accepted the position of the commission, and regarded the matter as closed.

Meanwhile, the commission rejected a complaint made against Ivor Callely.

Mr Callely was junior minister at the Department of Transport when an advert bearing his photograph was published to advise motorists of “Operation Freeflow”, the traffic system in place for Dublin in the pre-Christmas period.

The opposition believed that his appearance in the advert breached the code of conduct because it effectively helped raise his electoral profile.

But the commission said it “did not consider that the inclusion of a photograph of an office holder in an advertisement relating to a matter which encompassed his or her functions as an office holder was necessarily inappropriate”.

However, it did warn provisions of the code were insufficiently clear to distinguish in such matters.

The commission has written to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern requesting that the relevant section of the code be reviewed.