A COMMUNICATIONS consultant has told the High Court he regarded Monica Leech’s €650 to €800 per day charge for public relations services to the government as “very low compared to the norm in the industry.”
Michael Parker, a founding partner of Insight Consultants, said there were a number of factors which would determine the rate, including experience.
He believed the going range of rates would be between €1,200 and €1,500 a day where a person was an account director for the service. An €80 per hour rate for some of Ms Leech’s work struck him as being “very low”.
Under cross-examination, Mr Parker said he was not surprised that, in a contract awarded to Ms Leech for €800 a day, the only competing bid was €500 per day.
Cheapest was not always best, he said. Matters to be taken into account included how a consultant was proposing to carry out the work, their experience and the price.
Mr Parker was giving evidence on the fifth day of Ms Leech’s action against Independent Newspapers alleging libel in articles published in the Evening Herald in November and December 2004 arising from her appointment as special adviser to Martin Cullen who was a junior minister with responsibility for the Office of Public Works before being promoted to the Department of Environment and Local Government.
Ms Leech (49) claims the Evening Herald falsely claimed she got government public relations contracts because she was having an affair with the minister. Independent Newspapers, which owns the Herald, denies libel.
Evidence on behalf of Ms Leech concluded yesterday and the court was told the defence would not be giving evidence.
The jury, of seven women and five men, was sent away until next Tuesday when closing speeches will be made by lawyers for both sides.
Earlier, the court heard evidence on Ms Leech’s behalf from Seán Benton, who in 2001 was a commissioner with responsibility for projects in the Office of Public Works (OPW) which employed Ms Leech on her first short-term government contract. Mr Benton, now chairman of the commissioners of the OPW, said Ms Leech performed excellently and provided “fantastic service” to the OPW in promoting those projects.
Cross-examined by Eoin McCullough SC, for the defence, Mr Benton said he was aware when Ms Leech was taken on there was a general belief on Mr Cullen’s part of a need to communicate the OPW’s work better.
The manner in which Ms Leech got the contract complied with national and international rules and that had been found to be so by a number of examinations of the matter, including the government-appointed Quigley Report into the awarding of contracts to Ms Leech, he said.