Auditor to query £1m expenditure by Wicklow council

A local government auditor is investigating a complaint that the spending of almost £1 million by Wicklow County Council was outside the power of council management.

The complaint is being investigated by Mr P.F. Christian, from the Department of the Environment and Local Government and, if upheld, could mean council management becoming personally liable for all or some of the expenditure.

The spending relates to more than £600,000 used to advance plans for a controversial 330-acre landfill dump at Ballynagran, south of Rathnew, after the elected members had voted in 1994 to drop the proposal.

The spending also relates to court costs incurred in 1996 by the county council following the refusal of the county manager, Mr Blaise Treacy, to provide the then council chairman, Mr Tommy Cullen (Lab), with the council's files on the planning history and ownership of Glen Ding, near Blessington.

Both issues were the subject of High Court cases which were lost by the county management.

In 1996 Mr Justice McCracken ruled that Mr Treacy had been wrong in withholding the Glen Ding files from Mr Cullen.

The sale of land at Glen Ding by the Department of Energy to Roadstone was later investigated by the Comptroller and Auditor General on a request from the Dail Committee on Public Accounts. An appeal against Wicklow County Council's decision to grant planning permission for quarrying to Roadstone was upheld by An Bord Pleanala last year.

In the second High Court case Ms Justice McGuinness ruled last year that the creation of the dump at Ballynagran was a material contravention of the 1989 County Development Plan, and, as such, was a matter for the councillors and not a matter reserved to the county manager. In all, between 1993 and 1997 the county council has spent some £859,000 on the project.

Yesterday, as the county council debated a new waste management strategy, Cllr Cullen told The Irish Times that if the local government auditor upheld the complaint the county manager could be personally surcharged the amount.

The complaint, which is signed by four individuals, members of the Ballynagran Action Group and Wicklow Heritage Trust, is also understood to criticise the spending of £500,000 (part of the £600,000 spent after 1994) on a report commissioned from consultants M.C. O'Sullivan and delivered in March 1996. The report was rejected within three months by the councillors in continuation of their earlier rejection of the dump proposal.

Yesterday, Mr Val Cosgrave, who is one of the signatories to the complaint, said it wasn't enough simply to win "over the Ballynagran issue". "We must try to make sure that this couldn't happen again. Anyone has the right to visit the council offices during an audit and to question any invoice. Environmental groups across the country may take issue with the way they are opposed by the authorities and question their spending."