The Office of Public Works has given a file on its public relations contract with Ms Monica Leech to Mr Dermot Quigley, the former Revenue chairman who is investigating the contract for the Government.
In addition, Mr Quigley has spoken to officials in the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government about a separate contract Ms Leech received from that Department.
The contracts with Ms Leech - a close political associate of the Minister for Transport, Mr Cullen - are also under scrutiny by the Standards in Public Office Commission.
Mr Cullen has been under sustained political pressure over contracts that the Waterford-based public relations consultant secured with Departments and offices which were under his direct political control. He has always defended the contracts, which have been severely criticised by the opposition parties.
Mr Cullen welcomed the inquiries when they were set up.
Ms Leech was engaged by the OPW in December 2001 when Mr Cullen was minister of state with responsibility for the office. She was paid €42,902 for work which continued until June 2003.
When Mr Cullen was appointed to the Cabinet in mid-2002 as minister for the environment, Ms Leech was engaged to provide PR advice to that Department at a rate of €800 a day on a three-day-week basis.
She has received some €300,000 from the Department under the terms of that contract, which is continuing.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, moved Mr Cullen to the Department of Transport in the Cabinet reshuffle last autumn.
Mr Quigley agreed to investigate the contracts for the Government on December 21st. He has been asked to complete his work before the end of this month.
He is seeking to establish the circumstances in which the contracts were reached with Ms Leech and ascertain whether the services outlined in the contracts differed in any material respect from those provided. He was also asked by the Government to make recommendations in relation to "any changes in practice which may be desirable".
In addition to the Quigley inquiry, the Department of the Environment and the OPW are preparing affidavits for the Standards in Public Office Commission.
That body, the State's independent ethics watchdog, will decide in the light of those documents whether to proceed with a full-scale investigation. Officials in both bodies were ordered before Christmas to produce e-mails and "post-it" notes for the commission's inquiry.
Mr Quigley has already spoken to the OPW chairman, Mr Seán Benton, and other officials.While he has not requested a trawl of records, he has asked questions about procedures, practice and payments in relation to the award of public relations contracts.
It emerged before Christmas that Ms Leech took representations on policy issues on behalf of Mr Cullen when he was minister for the environment. In work similar to that of a ministerial adviser, Ms Leech last year met interest groups who were lobbying Mr Cullen on policy issues.
