The controversy surrounding Fianna Fáil junior Minister Niall Collins and his wife’s purchase of a property from Limerick County Council appears to have come to a head – for now at least – in the Dáil on Thursday.
While there are continuing Opposition calls for Collins to be subject to their questions in the chamber, there is no great clamour for him to go and the Coalition leaders are backing him.
At this point the row hinges not so much on unanswered questions but on diametrically opposed interpretations of – sorry to get technical – Section 177 of the Local Government Act, 2001.
Under the Act, councillors must disclose if they know that they – or someone connected to them – have a “pecuniary or other beneficial interest” in the subject matter of a meeting before it is discussed.
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The person must withdraw from the meeting while the matter is being discussed or considered and refrain from voting on it.
Collins insisted in a Dáil statement on Thursday that he did not break the law.
He said neither he nor his wife had a “pecuniary or beneficial interest” in the land at Patrickswell, Co Limerick at the time when, as a then councillor, he attended a 2007 local authority area committee meeting where the sale of the property was recommended.
Collins’s wife, Dr Éimear O’Connor, had previously approached the council about the possibility that it would sell the land.
He is essentially arguing that his wife’s approach to the council about the land – before the meeting he attended – does not amount to an interest of the kind that would have to be disclosed under the Act.
[ ‘No law was broken,’ junior Minister Niall Collins insists as he addresses DáilOpens in new window ]
Collins says there was “no vote” at the meeting, at which it was agreed to sell the property on the “open market”.
He said “a number of offers were received” over six months, with his wife ending up as the highest bidder.
He said local authority area committees such as the one he attended in 2007 do not have the power to sell council land and that this is “a reserved and statutory function of the full county council by law”.
The final decision to sell the property to O’Connor for €148,000 came at a full meeting of Limerick County Council in 2008, more than a year after Collins had ceased to be a member because he was elected to the Dáil.
Collins’s Dáil statement did say that “in hindsight” it would have been better if he had not participated in the 2007 meeting, “even though it is absolutely clear that my wife did not benefit in any way from my attendance”.
But he insisted “no law was broken”.
Collins’s critics have a different interpretation of the law.
The matter was first reported by investigative news website the Ditch, which highlighted how failure to declare a conflict of interest is a “criminal offence” under the Local Government Act.
In the Dáil, earlier on Thursday, People Before Profit’s Paul Murphy argued that “unless Niall Collins is going to make the highly implausible case that he didn’t know that his own wife had expressed interest in buying the land, well, then the situation is absolutely clear: Minister Collins, then councillor, breached the code of conduct for councillors and he breached the Local Government Act.
“He arguably committed a criminal offence in doing so,” Murphy added.
He asked Tánaiste Micheál Martin: “How can he [Collins] remain as a Minister?”
The Fianna Fáil leader rejected Murphy’s arguments and strongly backed Collins, hitting out at the Ditch website, saying it is “a political organisation” that wants to attack the Government.
Martin said it would have been better if Collins had left the meeting and not participated, but he said he was not even a member of the council when the ultimate decision to sell the property was taken.
Martin said: “It was an open sales process, totally transparent, different bids and so on.”
There are continuing Opposition complaints, including from Sinn Féin, that they have not had the opportunity to quiz Collins on the issue, but there have been no widespread calls for his head.
Murphy is considering a complaint to the Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) related to his allegation that Collins breached the code of conduct for councillors.
It may well be that Sipo will be asked to look into the matter.
Should it agree to investigate it could potentially make a determination on the rights or wrongs of Collins’s actions at some point in the future.
For now, with the Government backing him, it appears Collins is safe, barring any further revelations.
