Unpublished corruption report ‘making people look guilty of something’
'It is making people look guilty of something. I mean, why isn’t it out there? Why isn’t it being revealed to clear peoples’ good names of any wrongdoing?'
A report into alleged planning corruption in Donegal that was commissioned 10 years ago remains “under consideration”.
The Mulcahy Report was completed eight years ago, in June 2017 - and a Donegal County Councillor says it’s high time it was opened to the public.
The report was put together by Rory Mulcahy, a High Court judge who was a senior counsel at the time, but it has yet to be published.
“That report has been lying on a desk far too long,” Councillor Tomás Seán Devine of the 100% Redress party told Donegal Live.
“It is making people look guilty of something. I mean, why isn’t it out there? Why isn’t it being revealed to clear peoples’ good names of any wrongdoing?”
It appears as if there is now willingness or urgency behind the scenes to release the report. It is believed that there are concerns over the nature of the findings.
Whistleblower Gerard Convie alleged some irregularities in Donegal County Council's planning department in the early 2000s and he presented a list of 20 samples to the government.
In 2013, the Department of Environment withdrew a review, overturned findings which questioned the whistleblower's motives, and apologised to Mr Convie.
Two years later, Mr Mulcahy was commissioned to conduct another review, but the report, which has now been on the desk of three successive Housing Ministers - Eoghan Murphy, Darragh O’Brien and James Browne - has not been made public.
Councillors Devine said: “Numerous Ministers have been looking at the report now, my God. Why can’t it just be put out there?
“We have all heard the rumours, but it needs to be published and it needs to be put out there. If there is nothing to hide, why not have it out in the open?
“There are people in the Donegal County Council chamber, why are they not asking for it to be published?”
Last year, in response to a parliamentary question from Deputy Catherine Murphy of the Social Democrats, the then Housing Minister, Darragh O’Brien, confirmed that there were over 70 requests for the release of the report.
Donegal Live submitted a series of queriers on the matter to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.
However, a spokesperson said that it remained the position that the Minister is “considering the report” and “will bring this matter to Government for consideration in due course”.
We asked what has been done in the intervening period since last June when the Department similarly said the matter would be brought to government for consideration “in due course”, but only what has now become a standardised response on the issue was received.
The statement said: “The Attorney General's office has been consulted on both the content of the report and also on the issue of its potential publication and dissemination. The review is a scoping report and as such it does not make findings as to the truth or otherwise of allegations that have been made by an individual against named persons.”
The Department spokesperson pointed out that decisions of the Commissioner for Environmental Information in 2019 and the Information Commissioner in 2020, would be “taken into account”.
They said: “It should be noted that in each of these cases, both the Commissioner for Environmental Information and the Information Commissioner decided not to grant access to the report.
“The Office of the Information Commissioner decision stated ‘placing the details concerned in the public domain would significantly breach the rights to privacy of identifiable individuals.’ Therefore, this is a matter that requires careful consideration given that the scoping report details unproven allegations against named persons."