Standards Commission to meet over Cullen contracts

The fate of Transport Minister Martin Cullen should be known on Friday evening after the Standards in Public Office Commission meets to study how he awarded PR contracts in two Government departments.

The independent watchdog will decide if there are grounds for investigating whether ethics legislation was breached when several contracts were awarded to Minister Cullen’s political associate, Monica Leech since 1997.

A spokesman for the Commission said today: “The six members will meet for much of Friday and a statement will be issued after the meeting.”

The spokesman added that the Commission has already studied relevant documents forwarded from the Office of Public Works and the Department of Environment after an order of discovery was issued by its chairman, Justice Matthew Smith.

They have also consulted last week’s 45-page report by former Revenue Commissioners boss Dermot Quigley which found no clear evidence of any impropriety by the minister.

It calculated that contracts awarded to Mrs Leech in both departments since 1997 were worth €390,000 including expenses and VAT.

The Commission includes Comptroller and Auditor General John Purcell, Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, Clerk of the Dáil Kieran Coughlan, Clerk of the Seanad Deirdre Lane and former Labour TD and minister Liam Kavanagh.

The Commission set a precedent in 2001 when it ruled that former junior agriculture minister Ned O’Keeffe had inadvertently breached ethics legislation by not disclosing that his family-owned piggery had a licence to use meat and bonemeal.

Mr O’Keeffe later resigned as minister and the Dáil suspended him for 10 days.