COMMUNICATIONS consultant Monica Leech has agreed before the High Court there was some controversy about contracts she got from the Department of the Environment when Martin Cullen was minister there.
Ms Leech said any controversy was a matter for the minister and his officials to answer, not herself, and her appointment as special adviser to Mr Cullen was “irrelevant” to various newspaper articles about her which she claims are libellous.
She was a “unique find” when she was offered the work and she did it well, she said.
She was being cross-examined on the third day of her action over the Evening Herald’s 2004 coverage of her work as special adviser to Mr Cullen, then a junior environment minister.
Ms Leech said the manner of her appointment was not something she could answer for. She was asked to do the work and did it well, she said.
Answering Eoin McCullough SC, for Independent Newspapers, Ms Leech said she believed what was relevant was that the Herald had fanned the flames of controversy while at the same time running “a series of filthy articles painting me as corrupt, as an adulterer and who got €1,200 per day when my contract said €800”.
She accepted questions had been asked in the Dáil about her contracts and an inquiry was set up by then taoiseach Bertie Ahern. She said she had been completely exonerated by that inquiry.
She repeatedly rejected Mr McCullough’s suggestion that her role in these matters were legitimate matters of public concern.
She said she did not know she was the only person in the country to be appointed a project information co-ordinator when Mr Cullen, who was the junior minister responsible for the Office of Public Works (OPW), first asked her to take on publicly funded PR work.
She said Mr Cullen wanted her there because of her previous experience working with Waterford Tourism. She was not a friend of the minister but had a professional working relationship with him.
If Mr Cullen gained political advantage from her job profiling the good works of the OPW, it had nothing to do with her.
Ms Leech said she was “worn out” by what she considered to be a continuing attempt by the Herald to “grind me” and the court adjourned at one stage for 15 minutes at her request as she had a bad headache.
The court heard Mr Cullen had told Ms Leech he wanted her to take on a new communications brief in his department. She was offered an initial short-term contract and later had to tender for a longer-term two-year contract which she won.
There were two bidders and her €800 per day rate was €300 more expensive than the other bidder. This second contract was worth €345,000, based on a three-day week or more if required.
Ms Leech denied that it had not been suggested by the Herald she was having an affair with the minister and said that was the suggestion of the Herald at all times.
At one stage, she told Mr McCullough she objected to his body language. “You frown and you don’t make eye contact and you do not listen to me . . . I do not know if you are aware of it and I hope you find that helpful.” She told counsel he was “paid about €4,000 a day” and “your client has you here now to try and get out of a situation that they created for me”.
She asked why the articles included photos of her in an evening dress and references to “a pretty PR girl”. Earlier, in direct evidence, Ms Leech became visibly upset as she told about colleagues’ adverse reaction to one of the Herald articles alleging she had not attended any sessions of a UN conference in New York. That was “a lie”, she said.
The article was accompanied by a photograph which was “doctored” to give the impression her red dress was slit up the side, she said. That photo was put next to one of Mr Cullen, dressed in a lounge suit, deliberately to give the impression she was “some sort of floozy” enjoying a week away with the minister.
The case resumes next Tuesday.