A Green Party councillor has brought a High Court challenge aimed at overturning a report which found that Wicklow Fianna Fáil councillor and solicitor Fachtna Whittle had not breached ethics legislation in proposing and voting for a quarry rezoning without disclosing he was acting for the quarry owner in legal proceedings.
The action has been brought by councillor Deirdre de Burca against the Wicklow county manager and the chairperson of Wicklow County Council, with Mr Whittle as notice party.
Mr Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill yesterday granted leave to senior counsel Gerard Hogan, for Ms de Burca, to bring proceedings to quash the findings of the report following a formal complaint to the ethics registrar about Mr Whittle's conduct during a Wicklow County Council meeting on July 12th, 2004.
The case will centre on provisions of the Local Government Act which were enacted to provide an ethical framework.
Ms de Burca claims Mr Whittle breached the ethics provisions in that, when he proposed the rezoning of lands at Ballylusk to extend the scope of a quarry, he failed to disclose that the solicitors' firm of which he is principal was acting for the quarry owner in legal proceedings over the site. Local residents had claimed unauthorised development at the quarry.
Ms de Burca claims Mr Whittle should not have proposed the motion nor voted for it. She made a formal complaint about the matter to the ethics registrar on August 17th, 2004. The matter was then inquired into by the respondents, who published their report on June 15th.
The report concluded that, while it was "unwise" for Mr Whittle to have proposed the rezoning motion because of his firm's involvement in legal proceedings, he had no beneficial interest in the lands. It concluded he held no declarable interest in the lands for the purpose of the legislation.
Ms de Burca said the report was also critical of her in that it noted she had not attended the inquiry. She did not do so because she had made a formal complaint and it was for the respondents to construe the legislation on a basis of uncontradicted facts.
It was her case that the report was fundamentally flawed. Where a councillor was proposing a motion which bore on a local authority's functions, there was an additional obligation to disclose a declarable interest.
