Martin cullen is now a 'dead minister walking'

It's the story that won't go away. Last month the Taoiseach conceded as much when he agreed to set up an independent inquiry into the controversy the newspapers now call: "Monicagate".

This week, following the publication of Dermot Quigley's report, the story of the Minister and his PR consultant still shows no sign of going away. If anything, it looks set to hog the headlines for a while to come. And that's something the Taoiseach and his government could do without, especially in a week that saw a former Fianna Fáil minister jailed.

If Martin Cullen hoped the report would "draw a line in the sand" on the controversy and allow him get on with the business of being Transport Minister, he must be bitterly disappointed. While technically the report clears him of any impropriety or breach of department guidelines, it also reveals that the rules governing the awarding of contracts are disturbingly loose and ad hoc.

According to the Oxford dictionary, cronyism is: "the improper appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority". The amazing thing Quigley discovered is that there are no rules or guidelines in Government departments to prevent ministers from promoting their pals or political supporters for lucrative state contracts. In Ireland, if a Minister pushes the names of his/her pal for a contract, it might look bad, but it's not cronyism because there's nothing "improper" about it. It's perfectly legal.

Quigley's report confirms that Monica Leech was a political supporter of Martin Cullen. (In 2002, she gave one of Cullen's election committees in Waterford professional advice on the Minister's advertising campaign and as recently as November 2004, she was involved in fund-raising for the opening of one of his constituency offices).

The report shows that Martin Cullen, first as Minister of State at the Office of Public Works in 2001 and later as Minister of Environment in 2002, promoted the engagement of Leech's professional services in both departments. She was subsequently awarded a string of lucrative contracts.

It also reveals that during Martin Cullen's time in the OPW, the Office suddenly discovered a need to appoint a person "on the ground" in Waterford, the Minister's home constituency and coincidentally a place where Leech has her PR office.

Officials in the department justified her appointment by citing the number of major OPW contracts in Waterford. However, Quigley noted that the position wasn't thrown open to competition and that he couldn't find a precedent for the regional nature of the appointment.

The report suggests that Martin Cullen knew how lax the rules were. Quigley quotes Cullen telling him that while Leech may be a political supporter: "there is no legal or other bar to a consultant to a department being politically involved (sic)".

In his findings and conclusions, Quigley also notes that: "There is nothing in the (rules) that would prevent a Minister of State from making a suggestion about engaging a named consultant".

In fact, Quigley discovered that the guidelines for awarding contracts varied from department to department. He found that departments and offices were often left to make their own judgements in individual cases and that: "There is no absolute right or wrong."

He also discovered there wasn't a detailed up-to-date analysis available of what the actual practice was across Departments and Offices on the awarding of contracts. Such information, he said, would have provided him with "a yardstick for the purposes of the inquiry".

In the end, the best Quigley could do was conclude that the practice of ministers proposing a named person for a contract ran the risk of giving "rise to a perception of impropriety, eg, that a supporter, associate or an acquaintance of a Minister was getting special treatment". He urged the Taoiseach to adopt tighter guidelines.

There may be no killer blow in the report but the level of detail it reveals about the way Martin Cullen awarded contracts to Leech is still damaging for the minister. He may yet face a more substantial challenge from the Standards in Public Office Commission, the State's ethics watchdog, if it decides to carry out a separate investigation.

In the meantime, the opposition parties are rubbing their hands with glee. They reckon a wounded minister is better value than a dead one and for some, Martin Cullen is now a "dead minister walking".

Ursula Halligan is TV3's Political Editor and presenter of The Political Party, TV3, Sundays at 5pm