Massive payments to politicians and a huge rezoning

Payments of €500,000 to councillors coincided with the rezoning of lands that have now become the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. As a direct consequence, an already disadvantaged community has been further disadvantaged. The Planning Tribunal has commenced public hearings that will involve 88 witnesses and tens of thousands of documents – unless prevented by the Courts. By Vincent Browne

Payments of close to €500,000 were made to Dublin county councillors in the early 1990s when a site in west Dublin was rezoned in contravention of previous development plans and in defiance of the advice of Council officials. The payments were made by the lobbyist, Frank Dunlop, and the Cork property developer, Owen O'Callaghan.

The councillors and Owen O'Callaghan claim the payments were political donations. Frank Dunlop says most of the payments made by him, nearly €300,000, were corrupt payments designed to induce the councilors to support the rezoning of the property concerned, Quarryvale, now Liffey Valley.

The Planning Tribunal, chaired by Judge Alan Mahon, is at present commencing public hearings into these payments and the rezoning of the Quarryvale lands. Owen O'Callaghan has applied to the High Court to have the inquiry stopped on the grounds that the Tribunal has already treated him improperly and any further investigation will amount to an unfair assault on his reputation.

The story of Quarryvale began in 1989 when Tom Gilmartin, a property developer originally from Mayo but by then based in England, wanted to become involved in property development in Dublin. At first he looked at a site on Bachelor's Walk but soon afterwards his attention switched to a site on the junction of what was to become the M50 and the Galway road, Quarryvale. He decided on a massive retail development on the site and started to acquire property in the area.

What is extraordinary about this is that at the time Quarryvale was zoned as a residential-green-belt-industrial zone. As Patricia Dillon, counsel for the Planning Tribunal said recently, "you couldn't put a sweet shop at Quarryvale with that zoning".

But within a few years, following the involvement of the Cork property developer, Owen O'Callaghan, and the former government press secretary, Frank Dunlop, the zoning of Quarryvale was transformed. Dublin county councillors voted by a substantial majority to change the zoning of Quarryvale after Frank Dunlop had made payments to these councillors of IR£232,000 (nearly €300,000), and Owen O'Callaghan had made payments to the councillors of IR£104,700 (€133,000). In addition, Owen O'Callaghan made donations to Fianna Fáil of IR£145,000 (€184,000) over the period 1989 to 2000.

Frank Dunlop now says that most of the monies he expended were "corrupt payments". Owen O'Callaghan denies any payments made by him were corrupt – he says they were political donations. The councillors to whom the payments were made claim they were "political donations" or payments for commercial services rendered.

What the councillors did was in contravention of the development plan laid out in 1983 by the town-planer, Myles Wright, who had proposed three town centres in west Dublin: Tallaght, Blanchardstown and Neilstown. It was also done in defiance of the advice of Council officials and planners who were opposed to the development of Quarryvale, which, inevitably, involved the abandonment of the plan to create a town centre at Neilstown.

As a consequence of this decision, Neilstown and the surrounding community has not had a town centre and the ancillary facilities (see accompanying article).

It is acknowledged that there was always a problem with the Neilstown site because of access difficulties. A central demand of the Council had been that the developer of the Neilstown town centre would have to build an access road, and this was always regarded as problematic. But the relocation of the centre at Quarryvale was, in the description of the Council manager, in a "peripheral" location in relation to the community the centre was supposed to serve. There were also objections from the Council traffic officials because of the traffic loads the siting of a major retail area, (now Liffey Valley), on the junction of two such busy thoroughfares would bring.

The scale of the payments made to some of the councillors – those regarded as having most clout on the council, at least on the Fianna Fáil side – was considerable. For instance, Colm McGrath, who was the prime mover in sponsoring the rezoning motion on Quarryvale, was paid nearly IR£50,000 by Owen O'Callaghan and he was further contracted to provide commercial services to the Quarryvale project. Colm McGrath has insisted such payments to him were either political donations or payments for commercial services and that his support from the Quarryvale project was always "unconditional".

A curious feature of Colm McGrath's involvement is that he claims to have favoured the rezoning of Quarryvale all along and yet his motion to rezone was tabled at the very last moment in February 1991 – had the motion been submitted a day later, there could have been no rezoning for years until new development plans were drafted. This will be a feature of the Tribunal's inquiries.

The late Liam Lawlor played a central role in the rezoning, first as a councillor and, after he lost his seat on the Council in the June 1991 local elections, as an adviser. He was paid a "minimum" of IR£153,500 (nearly €200,000) by Frank Dunlop and a further IR£25,000 (€31,750) by Owen O'Callaghan. Lawlor had claimed he was owed monies by Dunlop for introducing Dunlop to the project and providing other advice. He claimed the monies obtained from Owen O'Callaghan were political donations.

According to Frank Dunlop, a Fine Gael councillor, Tom Hand, now deceased, demanded IR£250,000 for his support for Quarryvale. So outrageous was this demand, according to Dunlop, that he reported it to the then Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, in 1993 – John Bruton has no recollection of being told this and says he would have remembered being told such information because of the scale of the monies involved.

A large number of the councillors who voted for the rezoning received monies either from Frank Dunlop or Owen O'Callaghan.

As an apparent "sweetener" to the local community in Neilstown and the councillors who were reluctant to support the rezoning in the midst of the controversy, the promoters of Quarryvale said they would develop a National Stadium at Neilstown. Nothing has come of this.

The motion to rezone Quarryvale imposed a cap on the development of what became the Liffey Valley Shopping Centre. Subsequently that cap was lifted.

Throughout the saga, Tom Gilmartin claimed he had the support of ministers to have Quarryvale declared a "tax designated" area. This never materialised but there are indications that this proposal won support from within the government at the time, notably from Padraig Flynn, the Minister for the Environment, to whom Tom Gilmartin had given IR£50,000 in September 1989.

Documents disclosed to the Tribunal suggest that Owen O'Callaghan had access to very reliable political information throughout the saga, information from within the government. One of his concerns was that Blanchardstown centre would not get tax designated status – this would have attracted potential Quarryvale tenants away from Quarryvale to Blanchardstown. He was able to reassure his partners that this would not happen. Subsequently, Tom Gilmartin alleged that Owen O'Callaghan had told him at the time that he had paid Bertie Ahern IR£50,000 to ensure Blanchardstown would not be favoured. Owen O'Callaghan has denied this, as has Bertie Ahern. Several other claims by Tom Gilmartin concerning what he says Owen O'Callaghan told him at the time have proved to be unreliable.

Tom Gilmartin was the first to seek the development of Quarryvale as a retail centre. He did so through his own company but got into financial difficulties and was induced by his bank, AIB, into entering into an agreement with the bank and Owen O'Callaghan, on the project. The split between the three was 40 per cent each to Tom Gilmartin and Owen O'Callaghan and 20 per cent to AIB. According to Patricia Dillon SC, counsel for the Tribunal, documents discovered by the Tribunal show that AIB should have included its shareholding in this arrangement in its annual returns. p