The Labour Party said this afternoon that the Prime Minister needed to declare whether he agreed with the Mepa audit officer's report on the Bahrija development permit, issued yesterday, and who would assume political responsibility for what had taken place..

Environment spokesman Leo Brincat and Planning spokesman Roderick Galdes observed that the auditor had made extremely serious accusations and the Prime Minister therefore needed to explain and take a position with regard to the granting of the scandalous permit by people he had appointed.

They noted that the auditor had declared that all planning regulations had been ignored, broken or circumvented, Mepa files on this case had disappeared; the application should have been refused outright, but had instead been processed; there might have been a secret agreement with members of the board, and the members of the board were described as 'incompetent'.

This, the Labour spokesman said, was the same DCC board which processed a large number of development applications before the general election. It was the same board which was forced to resign a week before the election after irregularities were found in the granting of another permit for development in an outside development zone.

"The fact that this board resigned does not mean that responsibility should not be assigned." The Prime Minister now had to declare who should shoulder responsibility. Should it be the Prime Minister, who appointed the board, or George Pullicino, who was the minister in charge at the time?

Unless a clear position was taken, the Prime Minister could not be credible, the Labour spokesmen said.