The Minister for the Environment, Mr Roche, has indicated that a PR contract given to Ms Monica Leech by his predecessor, Mr Martin Cullen, will not be renewed when it expires in 10 days.
In addition, the Government said last night it would introduce new ceilings on the pay rate for external PR consultants in the wake of the controversy surrounding the contract held by Ms Leech.
She was being paid €650-€800 per day for work in the Department of Environment.
Ms Leech's contract is still the subject of an examination by the Standards in Public Office Commission, although Mr Cullen was cleared of wrongdoing in a separate inquiry commissioned by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
Any move by the Standards in Public Office Commission to initiate a full-scale ethics inquiry would be damaging for Mr Cullen, given the precedent set by Mr Ned O'Keeffe in 2001 when he resigned as a junior minister at the outset of an inquiry into his official declarations of interest.
As officials in the Taoiseach's Department worked to develop new procurement procedures for the retention of PR consultants by Ministers, Mr Ahern said yesterday that Mr Cullen had his full support.
The inquiry for the Taoiseach by former Revenue chairman, Mr Dermot Quigley, revealed that Ms Leech had received €265,806 in fees from the Department by the end of last November and €25,615 in expenses. This included €6,278 in mobile phone expenses since July 2002 and €15,339 for flights.
Mr Ahern's spokeswoman said Mr Quigley was paid about €200 per day for his work in the inquiry, which was initiated on December 21st and completed last Monday.
While Mr Quigley reported that all the people who spoke to him believed Ms Leech had made a significant contribution to the Department, he found that monitoring and recording of her work was "not satisfactory" and said there was no comprehensive inventory of the work done.
Mr Roche told the Dáil last month that he was impressed with Ms Leech's professionalism but his spokesman made it clear yesterday that her work for the Department is coming to an end.
"Nobody in the Department of Environment has indicated to the Minister that he should renew the contract, so he doesn't envisage that he will."
The spokesman went to on say the Minister believed that a significant amount of good work had been done. In addition, he said any move to renew Ms Leech's contract would be subjected to the new tests designed to ensure transparency in the allocation of PR contracts by Ministers.
While a three-person unit will operate on an ad-hoc basis within Mr Ahern's Department to scrutinise any requests from Ministers to hire PR consultants, the Taoiseach will have the ultimate power to sanction or veto an appointment.
"Whenever there is a PR or press-related contract in this broad area for any Minister or Minister of State or anything under their aegis, it would first be submitted to these three people," Mr Ahern said on RTÉ Radio.
The unit will comprise an official from the Department of Finance, an official from the contracts division and an official from the Cabinet Secretariat in Mr Ahern's Department with knowledge of the ethics legislation.
Mr Ahern did not agree with the assertion that Mr Cullen had been damaged by the affair. "I've been talking to Martin and Martin knows that I'm fully supportive of him and now he has to get on with his job [ as Minister for Transport]," he said.
"I said yesterday I wanted him to get on with the brief. This has been a distraction for him as well as being very hard for him and his family."
