Housing Minister’s special adviser joins high-profile PR firm
FORMER Fine Gael legal adviser Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has left her job as a special adviser to take up a new role with a PR firm that has lobbied the Government.
The barrister worked as a special adviser to Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy, earning in the region of €104,507 a year, until recently handing in her notice to take up a position with Dublin PR company Wilson Hartnell.
Public officials are normally obliged to serve a cooling-off period of a year before taking up positions with firms that lobby Government.
Under Section 22 of the Regulation of Lobbying Act former ministers, their aides and senior civil servants cannot take up positions in the private sector to lobby the Government for one year.
The Standards in Public Office (SIPO) – the State agency responsible for ensuring public officials comply with ethics guidelines – refused to reveal whether Ms Carroll MacNeill had applied for a waiver.
When asked this weekend as to whether she had complied with these regulations Ms Carroll MacNeill said: ‘The [legal] advice received in relation to Wilson Hartnell’s business activities was that we did not have to make an application to SIPO.’
Wilson Hartnell is one of Ireland’s longest established PR firms. The firm is listed on the official lobbyist register. Ms Carroll MacNeill’s former boss Eoghan Murphy, and the person who replaced her as a special adviser to the Minister, former journalist Paul Melia, are also listed as designated public officials on the same register.
According to the most recent lobbying register return, Ms Carroll MacNeill’s new employers Wilson Hartnell lobbied the Government as recently as late last year.
Ms Carroll MacNeill is married to former Ireland rugby international Hugo MacNeill and she has longstanding links with Fine Gael.
The barrister was the party’s legal adviser. In 2012, she was appointed special adviser to then children’s minister Frances Fitzgerald. She then worked as special adviser to then justice minister Alan Shatter.