Author: gavin

Anne Devitt has denied any wrongdoing in relation to receiving €20,000. The Irish Times reports:

Anne Devitt described as outrageous a suggestion that she could be bought and said there was nothing improper in her involvement in the issue.

Ms Devitt was chairwoman of the Northern Area Health Board between 2000 and 2002, at the time she was negotiating access across the health board’s land in Swords on behalf of landowner Joe Moran and his company Rayband Ltd.

In 1993, she signed the motion to rezone Rayband’s property for industry, but this could not be developed because it was landlocked.

The tribunal is investigating allegations by lobbyist Frank Dunlop that he bribed councillors Tom Hand, Cyril Gallagher and Tony Fox to secure the rezoning. Mr Hand and Mr Gallagher are deceased and Mr Fox denies the allegation.

Details of the payment to Ms Devitt in 2002 emerged during Mr Moran’s evidence earlier this week.

Yesterday, Ms Devitt told the tribunal there was no conflict of interest in her work for Mr Moran because health board officials knew at all times that she was acting as a consultant.

The matter had never come up for discussion on the board of the Eastern Regional Health Authority, but if it had she would have withdrawn. “The fact that I’m a member of the health board should not prevent me from acting in my profession,” she told Judge Gerald Keys.

Under the agreement mediated by Ms Devitt, Rayband agreed to build ambulance and patient facilities in return for access across the board’s land. Her role was to “keep the matter moving” and move it up the health board’s list of priorities. She had no role in the planning permission subsequently lodged by Rayband’s architect.

“I would have said to the health board ‘here is an opportunity for us to get badly needed facilities now’ . . . It was a win-win situation.” The workshops on the health board site were dilapidated and the access road a disgrace and a health hazard, she said, so the new facilities would be a tremendous benefit.

“I do not see any conflict of interest in providing facilities for the mentally and physically handicapped in my area.”

Judge Keys had asked Mr Moran if it had not dawned on him that the public could perceive that he was trying to buy Ms Devitt.

Ms Devitt described the suggestion as outrageous. “The only point in buying a person is if they can actually deliver. I wasn’t in a position to deliver, on the council or the health board.”

Ms Devitt has qualifications as a teacher and a solicitor, but said her dealings with Mr Moran were as a consultant. She believed he would have been aware of her knowledge of the intricate workings of the health board. She didn’t think €20,000 was a large amount for the work done, which took over a year.

However, she didn’t have any documents from her work as her computer was stolen in 2003.

She had no involvement in the planning permission lodged following her mediation and she did not influence the decision of the county council, she said

I would be too…

Leading businessman Joe Moran has told the tribunal he only reluctantly agreed to pay £25,000 in fees to Frank Dunlop to lobby for the rezoning of his land in north County Dublin.

Mr Moran said his brother, Colm, and a business partner, Michael Hughes, agreed the fees with Mr Dunlop at a meeting in 1992 and he was informed several days later.

“I said there was no way we should have agreed that.” However, his colleagues told him this was “the going rate”.

At that stage, they had spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on “architects and advisers and everybody else” in trying to develop the lands at Lissenhall, near Swords.

He eventually agreed to pay half upfront and half when Mr Dunlop delivered. “If you want it done, you have to pay it.”

Asked about his contact with Mr Dunlop, Mr Moran replied: “Never met him, never spoke to him, never saw him.”

He denied an intervention by former minister Ray Burke was pivotal to a decision by him to apply for industrial zoning on the land. He had already decided to seek industrial zoning when Mr Burke, at a meeting in the Burlington Hotel in December 1989, advised him to follow this course.

Yet another legal challenge, worth quoting in full because of its signifcance to the workings of the Plannin Tribunal:

The High Court has begun hearing a bid by Cork property developer Owen O’Callaghan to prevent the Mahon tribunal from further inquiring into, or making any findings on allegations against him, by developer Tom Gilmartin.

The tribunal proposes to continue those inquiries in its Quarryvale Two module.

The case has been brought by Mr O’Callaghan; John Deane, a solicitor and partner in O’Callaghan Properties; Riga Ltd of Lavitts Quay, Cork, and Barkhill Ltd, which developed the Liffey Valley shopping centre in Dublin.

The tribunal is opposing the application and has denied the allegations of bias. It also denies it gave Mr Gilmartin a special or privileged status. The case before Mr Justice Thomas Smyth is expected to last two weeks.

Mr O’Callaghan claims Mr Gilmartin made “entirely untrue” allegations in private which were never mentioned in evidence by Mr Gilmartin at the tribunal’s public sessions and were concealed by the tribunal.

It had ignored “glaring” inconsistencies between Mr Gilmartin’s private statements to its lawyers and his evidence on oath, Mr O’Callaghan claims.

The tribunal denies that it offered immunity to Mr Gilmartin as an inducement to get him to testify against Mr O’Callaghan. It contends such a claim indicates a misunderstanding of the nature of the tribunal.

The tribunal says it had been openly stated by its counsel that Mr Gilmartin had been granted immunity from the DPP, on foot of a request from the tribunal, which was subject to his giving truthful testimony.

Mr O’Callaghan claims the alleged bias against him is evident from the tribunal’s failure to disclose statements made by Mr Gilmartin to tribunal lawyers which were inconsistent with Mr Gilmartin’s evidence to the tribunal.

The existence of those statements became known during cross-examination of Mr Gilmartin but the tribunal had refused to disclose them. Last July the High Court ordered the tribunal to disclose the documents, later upheld by the Supreme Court.

In the Supreme Court last November, tribunal counsel conceded that the documents had been wrongly withheld from Mr O’Callaghan and that had they been made available to him in March 2004 when Mr Gilmartin was giving his evidence, they could have been used to ground a judicial review application.

Senior counsel Paul Gallagher read a number of documents outlining the background to the action. Among the claims is that the tribunal was protecting Mr Gilmartin by withholding material which was inconsistent with Mr Gilmartin’s testimony.

It is also claimed that the documents disclosed to Mr O’Callaghan as a result of the High Court order made against the tribunal showed “glaring” and “significant” inconsistencies between Mr Gilmartin’s private statements to tribunal lawyers and his evidence to the tribunal.

The allegations of Frank Dunlop continue:

The owners of rezoned land at Swords, Co Dublin, made a £12,000 payment to lobbyist Frank Dunlop to “ensure” planning permission was obtained on the land, the tribunal has heard.

This reference to Mr Dunlop’s role is contained in the financial records of Rayband Ltd, the company which owned the land at Lissenhall. Businessman Joe Moran and his family largely owned Rayband.

Yesterday, Donal Lynch, the company secretary of Rayband, who prepared the company’s books for auditing, said that the choice of words used to describe Mr Dunlop’s role was probably his.

He understood that Mr Dunlop had provided professional services for the company and he, in preparing the books, was describing what the lobbyist was doing.

Mr Dunlop alleges that he bribed three councillors to have the Lissenhall land rezoned for industry in 1992. He also claims that the owners of the land were aware that money would have to be paid to councillors to achieve this objective. The owners of Rayband deny any knowledge of the payments allegedly made by Mr Dunlop.