THERE are some deranged people out there. Take the various cretins who assaulted Monica Leech in restaurants on more than one occasion. Perhaps they were drunk, or mainlining heroin, or possibly brain damaged. On Thursday, Leech told a radio station about these assaults. She maintains that they occurred as a result of a series of articles in the Evening Herald which falsely suggested she was having an affair with a government minister. Last Wednesday, she was awarded €1.9m in libel damages, as decided by a majority jury verdict.

"I have been assaulted in restaurants," Leech told Tom McGurk on 4FM, explaining the impact of the articles. While there is no reason to disbelieve that the assaults happened, surely normal folk weren't prompted into such violent retribution over an erroneous report of an extra-marital affair. One hopes that most people have better things to be doing with themselves.

The dining assaults were only the tip of the degradation Leech claims to have suffered. "I've had my car vandalised. I've had stones thrown at me from a moving car. I have received horrible letters," she told McGurk. Truly, there are dark recesses of the Irish psyche that demand further exploration.

If this is what Leech was subjected to on the basis of false suggestions of an extra-marital affair, what chance for those who elicit real anger among the public? Take poor, bedraggled Sean FitzPatrick. If people are moved to violence that easily, Seanie's forays out from hiding must be in an armour-plated van, accompanied by a troop of bodyguards armed to the teeth. It's a jungle out there in modern Ireland.

The disdain these spitting thugs have towards people they were led to believe to be conducting an affair is shared elsewhere. During the libel trial, Leech's senior counsel, Declan Doyle, used words like "slut, harlot, tart, floozy" to describe how Leech would have been regarded as a result of the erroneous articles. "She's a liar, a cheat, cheating on her husband, cheating on her children, a tramp and a slut," he said, describing his interpretation of how the articles would be read.

The readers in question, we can take it, have been left unstained by the liberalisation of sexual mores over the last 50 years.

Leech was understandably pleased with herself as she did a round of radio interviews the day after the award. She told Matt Cooper on The Last Word that the €1.9m was a "whole lot of vindication". The newspaper articles had "destroyed my business", she said.

Unlike the thugs on the street, the business community of Waterford retained its high opinion of her through the crisis. She was appointed chief executive of the city's chamber of commerce in September 2005, just 10 months after the offending publications.

Lucrative

There is no question but that Leech was grievously wronged by events that occurred in November and December 2004. Rumours were spread that she was having an extra-marital affair with Martin Cullen, and that her acquisition of lucrative government PR contracts could be put down to the alleged affair.

The affair stuff was lies, but beneath the falsely-based titillation, there was a matter of serious public interest. The manner of Leech's acquisition of contracts worth over €300,000, from two departments headed by her townie and political colleague Cullen, was deserving of serious investigation, which was ultimately undertaken.

In explaining to Cooper on Thursday how her business had been affected, Leech said: "Once I became the story it was impossible for me to work on other clients' business." The inference is that the false allegations made her the story. Yet her retention on lucrative contracts by Cullen's department was a large part of the real story, and one that ran far longer than the lies over an affair. Monicagate, as it was dubbed, was about alleged crony capitalism, the germ that is now seen as having been at the heart of mismanagement of the economy through the bubble years.

On 28 November 2004, Ireland On Sunday broke the story of the contracts obtained by Leech in the Office of Public Works and subsequently in the Department of Environment, to which Cullen had been promoted. Photographs of the pair were published. It was never stated that they were engaged in an affair, but Leech sued on the basis that the words and pictures meant just that. Last year, the newspaper admitted liability and settled for €125,000.

Later that week, on RTé Radio's Liveline programme, a caller made an outrageously lewd remark about Leech. Last year, the station settled an action by Leech for €375,000.

Back in 2004, on 1 December, Cullen went on the radio and denied there was any affair. He defended the awarding of the contracts to Leech, saying: "By and large this would not be a very huge contract for a company of this size." At the time, Leech's company was a one-woman operation.

Last week's award was the outcome of an action taken by Leech over a series of articles in the Herald at the time. Nowhere was it stated that she and Cullen were having an affair, but she claimed the words and pictures meant just that.

The articles included a number of photographs, which were cropped. In one case the photo depicted Cullen and Leech with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop. The copy referred to a departmental trip to the UN, on which Leech was a part of the delegation accompanying Cullen.

Another excursion that arose in the trial was a departmental delegation's visit to Kuala Lumpur in 2004. This included a stop-off at a luxurious holiday-island five-star hotel for Cullen, Leech and three others from the delegation. Leech said this detour was entirely related to departmental business.

The jury were asked two questions. Did the articles mean she had an extra-marital affair with Cullen? Did they mean that she had travelled to New York but failed to attend the conference, which was the purpose of the trip?

A majority of the jury answered yes to the first question, but no to the second. After a further hour of deliberation, they awarded her €1.872m. The award was the biggest by far ever handed out for a libel action.

Fortune

Leech has now received over €2.2m for the manner in which she was libeled. The pain she suffered as a result of the false suggestions must be factored into her circumstances.

Back in 2004, soon after the story broke, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern accepted that it merited investigation. Former revenue commissioner Dermot Quigley was appointed to the task.

His report revealed that when Cullen was at the OPW he was looking to boost his PR and he mentioned a name to an official. He knew a woman who was just the business, Monica Leech, who happened to be a political supporter of his, and who would become involved in fundraising for him. Cullen followed up on the initial contact. Leech was hired on a short-term contract worth €650 a day.

In court last week, Leech repeatedly pointed out that she worked above and beyond the call of duty while on government contracts. According to officials who spoke to Quigley, she was just seen as "an extra pair of hands".

Quigley found that: "No detailed inventory of work actually done is available or was requested from Mrs Leech." According to PR people, this is unusual for any contract work in the public sector.

Cullen was promoted to minister for the environment the following year. In July, he brought Leech with him. Her money took a leap to €9,600 a month, or €900 a day for three days a week. Around this time, Murray Consultants, one of the state's leading PR firms, was retained by the Department of Sport on a contract worth half that amount.

Ordinarily, such a contract should have been put out to tender under EU rules. The rule was bypassed under a provision to facilitate emergencies. Leech's retention in Environment, while she was still employed by the OPW, was regarded as an emergency.

The following November the full contract was up for grabs. Under EU rules, it should have been open to at least five companies. Only three were invited to tender; only two, including Leech, were interviewed. She had the distinct advantage of already being on the premises, and only one other company was invited to tender for a contract that would have been the envy of any large PR firm.

She got the job. "My role was to add to the skills set in the department, to change the tone, philosophy and style of the way the department communicated. There was a huge amount of dithering and inefficiencies," she told last week's libel trial.

Accountability

This broom sweep didn't extend to ensuring accountability. She didn't have to provide detailed inventories. When Dick Roche took over the department from Cullen in late 2004, he began asking for a little more detail on work completed.

By the end of 2004, her duties included examining the media relations of Met éireann and examining the department's website. This was being done at a time when the department's press office included five perfectly competent civil servants.

Quigley found that the official guidelines were "broadly" followed in the hiring of Leech in both departments.

While the guidelines were followed, Leech's entry into both contracts was initially through her name being mentioned by Cullen. Without that, it is highly unlikely that she would have been in a position to acquire the lucrative contracts.

Everything flowed from those initial communications uttered by Cullen. Leech was hired through the proper channels. She was rehired in a tendering process. She made a packet. Her retention became the subject of controversy. She was wrongly cast as having an affair with Cullen. She suffered. She has received €2.3m in damages. All in all, despite the pain, not a bad result.