A leading member of the Heritage Council's wildlife committee has resigned in protest at what he claimed was "a political stroke" by the Minister for the Environment in allocating the proposed National Biological Records Centre to Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) in the heart of his own constituency. Barry Roche, Southern Correspondent, reports.
Mr Desmond Crofton - who was appointed to the wildlife committee in 2000 by the then minister of State, Ms Síle de Valera - said he viewed the process by which WIT has been selected as the location for the centre as totally unsatisfactory.
Mr Crofton said the Heritage Council had spent a long period reaching its conclusion that there should be an NBRS where information on flora and fauna would be stored, and had made that recommendation in December 2003.
"On May 25th, at the EU biodiversity stakeholders' conference in Malahide, Minister Cullen announced that he was going to go ahead with the centre, and he acknowledged in his speech that several academic institutions had expressed an interest in hosting the centre, but he then departed from his script to mention Waterford Institute of Technology was one of these."
Mr Crofton said there was no further mention of the matter until a scheduled meeting of the Heritage Council's wildlife committee on June 21st, when members were informed that an agreement had been reached with WIT. When he asked if other institutions had been approached, he was told that none had been approached nor had it been put out to tender.
"I believe that the centre is going to Waterford because of political patronage - it's a political stroke. I was shocked to learn within days of the Minister making the announcement on May 25th that officials from his Department had made a phone call to the chief executive of the Heritage Council, Michael Starrett.
"In that phone call the CEO was advised that the Minister would have to be protected from any adverse publicity arising out of his decision to locate the centre in Waterford, and what was even worse was that the Heritage Council should come up with a justification for the Minister's decision."
Mr Crofton said he understood that the clear impression was given in the phone call that the NBRC either went to Waterford or would not be approved at all. After he learned of this phone call, he resigned from the Heritage Council's wildlife committee on June 24th, detailing his reasons in a letter to Mr Cullen.
However, Heritage Council chief executive Mr Starrett rejected Mr Crofton's claims of ministerial influence, and that a Department of Environment official had rung him telling him that Mr Cullen had to be protected from adverse publicity. The Heritage Council had come to recommend WIT after "a very protracted policy process".
"I can refute that [the alleged phone call] - there was no contact by any Department staff member - there was no contact and no pressure was applied. . . To say that there was something untoward in the way that the south-east was selected is just not the case," he told RTÉ's News at One yesterday.
A Department spokesperson said many third-level institutes had expressed an interest in being the host site for the centre, and the Heritage Council in its initial response to the Minister proposed WIT as its preferred site.
The spokesperson added that the Heritage Council had highlighted that the south-east was a "nexus of environmental expertise", with the Heritage Council itself headquartered in Kilkenny, the EPA located in Wexford and the Department of the Environment due to be decentralised to locations in Wexford, New Ross, Waterford and Kilkenny.