The longest-serving member of Killarney Town Council has rejected an allegation by a fellow councillor to the Standards in Public Office Commission that members do not leave the chamber when they have declared an interest in a subject.
Killarney Fianna Fáil town councillor Patrick O'Donoghue, a director of Fáilte Ireland, who is being investigated for alleged breaches of the Local Government Act 2001 ethics framework on planning, told a public hearing of the commission in March he could not remember or recall "one instance" where a councillor, having declared an interest, had left a meeting in Killarney. This was over his five years as a councillor.
Cllr O'Donoghue's statement was never contradicted.
His remarks were broadcast again in a reconstruction on the RTÉ Prime Time planning programme last week.
At Monday night's monthly meeting of Killarney Town Council Seán O'Grady, a Labour councillor of 30 years, said the impression had been given that it was "normal" in Killarney for councillors with a beneficial interest to stay in the chamber and that the practice was widespread. "It is not true that anyone with a beneficial interest stayed continuously in the chamber. I want to state clearly that that is not so. I am the longest serving public representative here," he said.
He could only remember two occasions since the introduction of the ethics legislation of the Local Government Act 2001 in which it had happened and in one "the public representative himself was involved," (the alleged breach of the ethics framework in March 2006), said Cllr O'Grady, without however naming Cllr O'Donoghue.
Afterwards Cllr O'Grady declined to name the second councillor.
The Fianna Fáil councillor who proposed the controversial Gleneagle lands rezoning motion, auctioneer Brian O'Leary, also alluded to Prime Time and said he wanted to put on the record he had "never mixed being an auctioneer and a councillor". He raised the matter while commenting on a council plan to zone lands on the northern edge of Killarney, put forward by officials. The investigation into Cllr O'Donoghue is the first of its kind by the commission, which sent a report to the DPP. In October gardaí from outside Kerry began an investigation. Cllr O'Donoghue has maintained he acted transparently in the motion to rezone his family lands.