Almost 5,000 planning files are being checked in Kerry County Council to establish cases of conflict of interest, a meeting of the council was told yesterday.
A separate examination is also to be carried out within each service of the council "which will identify areas of potential conflict of interest," the county manager, Mr Martin Nolan, told councillors.
While planning was the most obvious area where cases of conflict of interest might arise, there was a need to look at all services , he said.
The check on 4,700 files for the year 2000 in all four local authorities in Kerry "will identify the agent who acted on behalf of the client and will identify who prepared the planning drawings," Mr Nolan said. It has been put in place following a general request from the Minister for Environment and Rural Development, Mr Dempsey, to county managers.
The two investigations into Kerry County Council employees about alleged planning irregularities have not yet concluded.
Councillors asked that the matter be speeded up because names were being "bandied about" and while the vast majority of officials acted with integrity everyone was being made to feel guilty.
"While this investigation is going on there will be further innuendo and further suspicion," said Mr Jimmy Deenihan TD (FG).
The meeting also heard that double-jobbing was openly carried out by some officials and was an established practice.
"We know they do plans. Officials of this council in the past have drawn up plans. That was accepted by members of this council. I don't know any member of this council who has raised an objection to that," Mr Deenihan said.
Cllr Billy Leen said officials drew up plans to supplement meagre incomes to support their families; but that did not mean they were "gangsters or criminals," he said. "The real gangsters are operating with impunity.
"There is a rotten apple floating around this council, and it's about time he was stopped. If it all comes out when the bubble bursts here, there will be fellows running," he predicted.
But Mr Jackie Healy-Rae dismissed the allegations as "a big, big bubble of air" and as having arisen at a time when there was a severe shortage of news.
January, he said, was "a desperate time for news", and journalists were looking for something to put down on paper.