LABOUR TD Joan Burton believed “something improper” was going on between developers and some of her Dublin County Council colleagues in the early 1990s, she told the Mahon Tribunal yesterday.
“I was taken aback at what I experienced,” said Ms Burton, recalling some of the zoning decisions taken and the atmosphere in the chamber and its environs.
Elected to the council for the first time in June 1991, she resigned her seat in January 1993 on being appointed a minister of state in the Department of Social Welfare.
Lobbyist and former Fianna Fáil government press secretary Frank Dunlop alleges he made corrupt payments totalling nearly £225,000 to 14 politicians to secure the rezoning of the Quarryvale lands now being probed by the tribunal.
Ms Burton said she had had no knowledge that Mr Dunlop was paying councillors. Initially, she would have regarded him with “the highest of esteem”.
Ms Burton said she had lived in Tanzania in the mid-1980s when the east African country was in the grip of corruption. If she applied the same standards with her experiences in the council, she would have felt something improper was going on.
“When a vote was won — in the sense that a zoning vote was successful — there was very often a celebratory atmosphere,” she said.
Ms Burton said she also noted a “too-close relationship” between councillors on the one hand and developers, their agents and lobbyists on the other.
She agreed with tribunal lawyer Patricia Dillon SC that a possible explanation was that money was changing hands.
Earlier, developer Tom Gilmartin agreed he had signed off accounts as a director of Barkhill, the company linked to the Quarryvale project, although there were no supporting invoices for £80,000 paid to Mr Dunlop.
Barkhill made three separate payments in May and June 1991, to Mr Dunlop’s company Shefran, which a handwritten note described as being in connection with the elections of that year.
The tribunal heard how Barkhill was the vehicle used by Mr Gilmartin to initiate the West Dublin project, but the developer claimed he was forced to hand over control of the company when he got into financial difficulties.
“I was never told what Shefran was,” he said.
Asked why he put his name to the audited accounts, Mr Gilmartin said, by the time payments were made, Barkhill “was out of my hands” and being run by his former business partner Owen O’Callaghan and AIB bank.
The audited accounts related to the period ended April 1992. Asked by tribunal lawyer Pat Quinn SC if he had accepted the books adequately reflected the position, Mr Gilmartin said at the time he couldn’t care less. “I had no input; I had no say in Barkhill... I was falsely (made) bankrupt.”
Irish Examiner
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