A public relations expert hired at €1,200 a day by the Department of the Environment when Mr Martin Cullen was Minister, helped to organise a fundraiser for Mr Cullen in his Waterford constituency last weekend.
Waterford-based Ms Monica Leech has earned €303,000 from the Department of Environment contract since she was recruited in July 2002 to deal with information campaigns on Ireland's waste crisis.
Defending Ms Leech last night, Mr Cullen, who now serves in the Department of Transport, said she had done "a terrific job" on the "Race Against Waste" campaign. She had saved the Government "a fortune", he said, because she had been the one to spot that it could qualify for €2.5 million of EU funding if it ran a joint campaign with its Northern Ireland counterpart.
"The latest campaign is costing the Government just €250,000 - a fraction of the cost of the first campaign we ran," Mr Cullen told The Irish Times last night.
Ms Leech was one of the organisers of the fundraiser for Mr Cullen's constituency organisation last Friday night in the Granville Hotel, Waterford, when 200 people paid €250 a head. The money raised is to be used to fund a new local office. However, Mr Cullen insisted last night that she had not been involved in any fundraising work for him during the time he served in the Department of the Environment. "She doesn't work for me anymore. She is not paid by me. But I have to say that she did superb work for the Department on a number of issues, including the National Spatial Strategy."
The current Minister for the Environment, Mr Roche, agreed: "I have to say that I have only met her three times since I took up office, but I am very impressed. It would be unfair of me to say otherwise. She is very sharp, has good ideas and an ability to put complex ideas into understandable English. The public service, for all of its other strengths, is not good at doing that," Mr Roche declared.
In an official statement, Mr Cullen's spokesman said: "Following the standard tendering process overseen by senior Department officials, Monica Leech Communications was selected to act as a communications consultant to the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in July 2002 and November 2002.
"This has been a matter of public record for some time, published in the form of answers to Parliamentary Questions. Monica Leech Communications holds no contract with the Department of Transport. At no time during Minister Cullen's period at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government was Ms Leech involved in any fund-raising activity for Minister Cullen. Ms Leech was a member of a voluntary committee which organised a fund-raising event in Waterford on Friday evening last for Minister Cullen's constituency organisation."
