A senior officer with a

Government development agency was jailed for 60 days and his name placed on the sex offenders register yesterday for an indecent assault on a nine-year-old boy in his Loch Ness-side home.

Johnathan Poore, 40, admitted removing the boy's clothing and touching him intimately in a bedroom of Poore's former address in West Lewiston, by Drumnadrochit, on the afternoon of March 22 this year.

Sheriff William Fulton rejected a defence solicitor's plea for a probation disposal and told Poore: ''The betrayal of trust involving a child under your care that day is such that only a prison sentence is appropriate.'' Sheriff Fulton also ordered that Poore, head of the press office of Highlands & Islands Enterprise in Inverness, be placed on the sex offenders

register for five years.

The offence came to light when Poore phoned his wife, who was away from home at the time, and told her he had ''done something terrible''.

Fiscal depute Stewart MacIver told Inverness Sheriff Court that Poore, now of Hythe, Kent, also phoned his GP and told her what he had done.

This led to concern for Poore's own well-being to such an extent that he was admitted to an

Inverness psychiatric hospital on a voluntary basis. Examination revealed he was not suffering from any mental illness, said Mr MacIver.

Solicitor Roger Webb said Poore was a first offender who had made no attempt to hide what he had done.

A psychiatric report said the offence was completely out of character and that the chances of Poore's re-offending were extremely small, said Mr Webb, although he pointed out that this did not tie in with a probation officer's report which said that there was ''some risk'' of re-offending.

Mr Webb urged Sheriff Fulton to consider probation with counselling as an alternative to custody.