The decision of the Minister for Transport, Mr Cullen, to hire a political supporter on a €300,000 contract during his time in the Department of the Environment will be put under the spotlight today.
Fine Gael TD Mr Fergus O'Dowd will question Mr Cullen's successor in Environment, Mr Dick Roche, about the number of outside consultants hired by the Department since 1997.
He has also sought information about the procedures used to award a €1,200-a-day contract to Waterford-based public relations consultant Ms Monica Leech shortly after Mr Cullen was appointed in June 2002.
Mr Roche, he said, should guarantee that he was "satisfied that all Departmental and EU procedures were adhered to, who applied for each contract, the cost submitted for each tender, the names of all those that sat on all interview panels".
Last night, a spokesman for Mr Cullen refused to answer any more questions about the controversy: "Our position stands. We have nothing further to add to it. The PR help was required at the time."
Last week, Mr Cullen said Ms Leech was originally hired on a short-term contract because Environment urgently needed specialist PR advice on a number of policies, including the National Spatial Strategy.
"Shortly after I went into the Department I realised there was some very big issues about to be rolled out within the Department, for instance the National Spatial Strategy.
"I believed I needed a communications specialist at that time, given the scale of the challenge that was involved with the spatial strategy and I needed somebody fairly quickly to assist me in that regard," he said.
It has now emerged, however, that a Dublin-based PR firm, Drury Communications, was paid €200,000 between 2000 and 2002 to run the communications campaign surrounding the spatial strategy.
The company had already advised on the drafting of the report, ran information roadshows across the country and organised the launch of the campaign on November 28th, 2002.
The details were given in a 2002 Dáil reply, though it has since emerged that Drurys appears to have received few further payments after Ms Leech's firm, Monica Leech Communications, was hired.
She has since been paid €303,000 for 12 days' work every month. She subsequently was involved in the "Race Against Waste" campaign and is now reviewing the communications of Environment, Met Éireann, the Heritage Service and ENFO.
Ms Roche is one of Mr Cullen's long-standing supporters in his Waterford constituency. She was recently involved in raising funds for the local Fianna Fáil organisation from a €250-a-head dinner.
Questioned last night about today's Dáil questions, a spokesman for the Department of the Environment said: "This is in the past, and it should be in the past. There will be no deviation from previous answers."
