Minister of State for the Environment Batt O'Keeffe has defended his action in passing on information about a controversial housing project in Charleville, Co Cork, to opponents of the project.
Mr O'Keeffe forwarded documentation submitted by the group behind the project, Slí Eile, to residents of Pike Farm estate in Charleville who are opposed to a plan by Slí Eile to develop a centre in the estate for people recovering from mental illness after discharge from hospital.
The proposal has led to considerable bitterness, with the Pike Farm Residents' Association picketing the office and home of Slí Eile founder Joan Hamilton.
The €330,000 cost of acquiring the house at Pike Farm has been funded by the Department of the Environment, with Cork County Council acting as its agent under the terms of the Capital Assistance Scheme.
In the course of applying for funding for the house, Slí Eile made documentation available to Cork County Council, including the group's strategy to deal with the opposition of locals. This correspondence was subsequently made available by Mr O'Keeffe to the residents' association, prompting a complaint this week to the Taoiseach's office by Slí Eile.
Ms Hamilton said that Mr O'Keeffe's involvement was "totally unethical and unhelpful", while in a letter to the Taoiseach, she said he had obtained the information "by dint of his office as a Minister in the department with responsibility for local government.
"The documents were not in the public domain and contained private correspondence between Slí Eile and Cork County Council, minutes of board meetings which we provided on a confidential basis to the council and notes on meetings by council officials," she said.
Ms Hamilton said in her letter that Cork County Council has publicly stated that it would not have passed the document on to the residents' association and she called on the Taoiseach's office to investigate the matter.
"By passing these confidential documents to a third party, Deputy O'Keeffe has abused his position in the Government and inflamed an already contentious situation between Slí Eile and Pike Farm Residents' Association."
A county council spokesperson said the council did not provide the document directly to Mr O'Keeffe but forwarded it to the Department of the Environment as a matter of courtesy and for points of information, given the department was funding the project.
But Mr O'Keeffe disputed this and said he had sought the information as a public representative.
"If you make representations as a public representative outlining concerns of a residents' group and if you get a response back from the relevant authorities, you're quite entitled to pass those on to the residents because they've become a public document," he said.
