Planning officials in Co Roscommon are not the first to infringe local government guidelines designed to guard against conflicts of interest between public duty and private work. By all accounts, the culture of "nixerism" is commonplace throughout the system - and has been so for years.
And it is not confined to rural counties either. More than two decades ago, for example, it was said the senior architect in one county would knock first before entering the office of one of his subordinates - to give him or her time to remove private work from the drawing-board and replace it with public work.
Though most local authority officials are above reproach in this regard, many architects, engineers and planners in the public service have nonetheless indulged in serial double-jobbing, more often than not after office hours, designing houses, driveways and group water schemes for private clients.
Over the years, numerous people have contacted The Irish Times with stories of such petty corruption in local government.
Mostly, these involve complaints that someone locally has an "inside track" in the planning process because such-and-such an engineer with the council was handling a particular project.
In some cases, this might involve designing a house in a scenic setting where planning permission would not normally be granted - and, almost miraculously, the scheme would be approved on "a nod or a wink", according to complainants, after the intervention of a council official.
Such an abuse of power is particularly serious if the official involved in "moonlighting" happens to be a planning officer, perhaps even with a role in adjudicating on the particular application.
Because the examination and consideration of planning applications is a quasi-judicial function, as the Roscommon county manager, Mr Eddie Sheehy, said yesterday.
There can be no doubt architects, engineers and planners in the local authority service are poorly paid, in relative terms. That is why many councils are short-staffed because so many qualified professionals have been tempted to leave in recent years for better-paying jobs in the private sector. But it is when those who remain, in a minority of cases, are tempted to supplement their income with private work in the same area that public confidence in the impartiality of the planning process is undermined. This represents a clear conflict of interest which is specifically prohibited by their terms of service.
Under the regulations governing their employment, local authority officials "should not engage in gainful employment that would impair their capacity to render effective service to the council or represent a conflict of interest". In particular, professional officers are debarred from undertaking private work.
Breaches of the regulations have come to light over the years.
In Dun Laoghaire, for example, the borough's most senior planning officer during the 1980s, Mr Sean Gibbons, used his position to canvass for work for his son's architectural practice.
Though suspended, he was allowed to take early retirement on a full pension. It was well-known among developers in Dun Laoghaire that their chances of winning approval for a project would be enhanced if they engaged Dundrum-based JT Gibbons and Associates as their architects. Yet nobody complained about what was happening; it only emerged as a result of a tangential court case. However, in most cases involving conflict of interest - at least until yesterday - county managers tended to turn a blind eye, usually on the basis that the only evidence against those suspected of breaking the rules was hearsay.
Stones have undoubtedly been left unturned as a result, even in areas where double-jobbing is commonplace. Perhaps the most surprising feature of this disinclination to take action is a judicial tribunal at Dublin Castle has been inquiring into the murky business of planning corruption for the past three years.
But the Roscommon county manager showed no such reticence when he became aware that two of his officials were "moonlighting" in the private sector (a third is being investigated). He is even said to have hired a private investigator to help track down hard evidence of their conflicts of interest. Mr Sheehy has done the State some service. No doubt he will bring the same probity to the affairs of Wicklow County Council, where he takes over as county manager today. There, too, there have been repeated complaints that all has not been well with planning. The chairman of Roscommon County Council said on RTE radio yesterday evening he believed unethical behaviour was not unique to his neck of the woods. If so, the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, who has responsibility for the planning system, should launch a wider investigation.
Otherwise, all we will be able to see is the tip of an iceberg of "moonlighting" in the local government service.