The public relations expert hired by Mr Martin Cullen for the Department of the Environment on €1,200 a day is currently revamping the Department's public information campaigns.
Mr Cullen, who is now Minister for Transport, strongly denied yesterday that he had a personal relationship with the Waterford-based Ms Monica Leech, although she is one of his political supporters.
The Department of the Environment said last night that Ms Leech was examining its website, its quarterly bulletin and stationery and the media relations of Met Éireann, the Heritage Service and ENFO. "It is quite detailed work when you get into it," a Department spokesman told The Irish Times. "There is a lot of work involved.
Ms Leech is contracted to work with Environment until next February. Mr Cullen's successor, Mr Dick Roche, complimented her performance earlier this week.
She was one of a team in the Department which chose advertising and public relations companies to run the successful cross-Border "Race Against Waste" publicity campaign.
The public information element of that campaign, which was run by Mary Murphy Associates in association with RPS-MCOS, was declared to be the Public Information Campaign of 2004.The competition was run by the Public Relations Consultants Association, Public Relations Institute of Ireland and the Public Relations Institute of Northern Ireland.
Belfast advertising agency, Lyle Bailey International Agency won a silver medal in the 2004 IAPI Advertising Effectiveness Grand Prix for its work in the campaign.
In a lengthy interview on RTÉ's News At One yesterday, Mr Cullen rejected charges that he had favoured Ms Leech when she was awarded a short-term contract shortly after he took over in the Custom House.
Although he had suggested her appointment, he said officials drew up the contract without any involvement by him. She subsequently won a longer-term contract in a tender race with two other companies.
Justifying the appointment, he said he believed he had needed a communications specialist because Environment was about to launch a number of major projects, including the National Spatial Strategy.
He rejected charges that Ms Leech would have enjoyed an advantage over competing tenderers because all public relation companies, he said, would have equal experience of dealing with government. The €1,200 daily fee was not exorbitant, he said. "Some of the other companies would charge a lot more than that. By and large, this would not be a very huge contract for a company of this size."
He said Ms Leech had completed a number of projects for the Office of Public Works during his time as minister of state there. "She did a lot of work for them after I left," Mr Cullen said.
Ms Leech was one of his supporters in Waterford, he added, although she had not been his director of election.
"She is part of a small voluntary group that from to time raised money legitimately for constituency purposes," the Minister said. "If we are going the road that people who have interacted or supported Fianna Fáil are now to be excluded from business with the Government, then I think that that is wrong."
Condemning Ireland on Sunday's coverage of the story, he said that some of the newspaper's conduct had been "entirely inappropriate and morally wrong" in contacting his separated wife and children.
He said the allegation that he had an affair with Ms Leech had caused great upset to both his own family and hers: "It is without fact. There is no truth. It is an invasion of my family and the family of Monica Leech."
He said Ireland on Sunday had tried to stand up the story, but failed. "The story could not be stood up because there is no truth to it," he added.