The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, deserves credit for his efforts to lance the boil of petty corruption in the local government system. For years, that system has been tainted by officials engaging in double-jobbing, moonlighting or "nixerism" - call it what you will - to a significant extent. In some areas people seemed to believe that having plans for their new home drawn up by a county council engineer, draughtsman, architect or technician would give them the proverbial inside track. And for years, a blind eye was turned to widespread and persistent breaches of the 1984 Local Government Regulations, under which such practices are explicitly prohibited.
Following publication in January by Mr Eddie Sheehy, then county manager of Roscommon, of the disquieting results of his investigations into this area, the Department of the Environment lost no time in requesting all 34 county and city managers to check on the double-jobbing situation in their authorities and to confirm that staff were aware of the regulations and complying with them. The Minister has now published the managers' reports which, in the main, express satisfaction with the probity of officials. But they also show that an alarmingly high number - 50 in all - have been disciplined in one way or another for dabbling in private practice, in some cases repeatedly.
In one case, the Minister has asked the Kerry county manager, Mr Martin Nolan, for further assurances in relation to the former Killarney town engineer. He was suspended for seven days and transferred after being found to have been operating as a significant property developer, presumably in his spare time, and to have been responsible, directly or indirectly, for no less than 73 planning applications as well as an unauthorised development.
The Minister has pledged to introduce urgently new guidelines to clarify the whole issue of conflict of interest - something which will no doubt be welcomed by IMPACT, the public service union; it advised its members not to sign "blanket" declarations that they were complying with the existing regulations, on the grounds of ambiguity. Whether or not this reading is justified, the union's advice clearly hindered the county and city managers in their inquiries; in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, for example, the response rate was just 26 per cent. Yet the Clare county manager, Mr William Moloney, insisted that he had seen "not a single shred of evidence" of corruption or wrongdoing in the planning arena.
Certainly, there is no evidence to support the common misconception that professionally-qualified planners must be among those engaged in double-jobbing; of the 50 cases in which disciplinary action was taken, hardly any involve planners.
The Minister must now look closely at the sanctions for breaching codes of conduct which, at present, provide a stark choice between a seven-day suspension and dismissal from office. Also, Mr Dempsey cannot ignore the fact that there has been a brain drain from the local government service as professionals leave to take up more lucrative jobs in the private sector. If he wants to retain their talents, he must ensure that they are paid what they are worth for administering a planning process which has been under strain as never before; that would also remove at least part of the temptation to indulge in double-jobbing.