Dublin Report Flood Tribunal opening gates on a culture of sleaze

By John Kelly

In Ireland, when is a bribe not a bribe?

When it’s a political contribution.

In what circumstances is it useful for an ambitious developer to give such bribes or contributions?

Almost all — especially if the developer owns land that can multiply in value when it is rezoned for a more lucrative purpose.

It will be especially profitable if the land is rezoned for (a) housing or, especially (b) for a giant shopping center conveniently close a new Euro-funded highway in the environs of Dublin or any other thriving Irish city or town.

In such fortuitous circumstances a developer stands to make lots and lots of cash. Obviously, profits can then be diverted to take advantage of other developing areas in any country under the sun where property is cheap and the potential huge.

Irish developers are now active in the British property market, where prices are finally beginning to climb out of the post-Thatcherite slump.

Development companies stand to make a lot of money in such circumstances, not alone in Ireland, but throughout the world. Does this mean that we will export the so-called brown-paper-bag technique to countries like Spain?

The answer must be that we have probably done so already. Brown paper bags or even an everyday plastic bag are the food containers for the Celtic Tiger.

There is nothing new about it. Every journalist knew that it was happening all the way back to the 1960s; few could prove it. Even if they could, the libel laws were there to crush any attempts to reveal the truth.

There was an old adage in the newspaper world to the effect that the greater the truth, the greater the libel. A legal missive from a lawyer killed many a potential lead story.

Astounding revelations at the Flood Tribunal concerning payments from Frank Dunlop, former government press secretary, to 15 selected Dublin County councilors for votes in favor of the gigantic Quarryvale shopping center in the River Liffey valley, have merely confirmed what all suspected and some knew.

More years ago than I care to remember, there was a Dublin County councilor based in Tallaght who hung a shingle on his garage door announcing to the world in general that he had become an auctioneer and estate agent. The man shall remain nameless. He is now confined to a nursing home. Ill and aging, he is said to be almost penniless. The only mystery is what he did with the money he earned in the halcyon development years in Tallaght.

As a councilor and an auctioneer, he had it coming both ways during the 1960s when Tallaght, in southwest Dublin, was little more than a grid of empty fields. He could sell his vote, which he did, to this or that developer. He could also demand as part of his price that he would process any subsequent valuations or auctions.

He made a lot of money and subsequently became a publican, the owner of several premises throughout the country. A charming rogue, he brushed aside all journalistic attempts to publish the truth. He was also an enormously popular councilor.

He was only one that I knew. The corruption extended through all parties. Councilors from both sides of the Liffey even cooperated with each other to ensure that developments got planning permission. For example, north councilors would regularly vote in favor of southside developments to divert press attention. South-city councilors would later return the compliment. Thus, few could complain about any undue favoritism. Probing journalists were then effectively stymied.

It was the ideal ground for powerful lobbyists. One of the most powerful of these is Frank Dunlop. Well known and generally liked by the press, he was introduced to the Fianna Fail party by the late Jack Lynch at a time that the party was riding high in the polls. He became press secretary and served subsequently under Charles Haughey. One of his earliest big tasks was to accompany the taoiseach on a groundbreaking St. Patrick’s day visit to the United Nations and the White House, where he met the president, Ronald Reagan.

When he left the political arena, Dunlop set up a company, ostensibly devoted to public relations but concentrating almost exclusively on lobbying. With the political contacts he had made, he became a spectacular success.

One of his foremost clients was the Cork-based property developer Owen O’Callaghan. In June of 1991, the developer had adopted a plan, first mooted by Tom Gilmartin, an Irish property developer based in England. The plan was to build a massive shopping center in Quarryvale, deep in the heart of the picturesque River Liffey valley.

The understandably piqued Gilmartin, who lost the project, has told all and sundry that he will make absolutely astounding revelations to the Flood Tribunal when he appears. He has already declared that he met senior political figures, including the present taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, in pursuit of his goal.

Where he failed, Owen O’Callaghan succeeded. Quarryvale is now a popular shopping center, so popular that it regularly leads to massive traffic jams on the new M-50 linking highway in Dublin. It was Dunlop who carried out the lobbying necessary to bring the project to fruition.

In part, as he revealed in a traumatic appearance before the tribunal, he had accomplished this with payments to 15 Dublin County councilors ranging from £500 to no less than £40,000, totaling a staggering £112,000.

Often, the money was handed over in Conway’s public house on Parnell Street, near the Dublin County Council headquarters on O’Connell Street. It was gratefully delivered in envelopes, sometimes even, in plastic bags. Occasionally, donations were even given in the public bar of Dail Eireann.

Sensational as that may be, Gilmartin has promised that there is much more to come. The biggest story has yet to be told, he claimed, promising to reveal all to the Flood Tribunal.

Up to now, the Flood Tribunal has generally floundered like a beached whale. Now it has tapped a vein of plain, unvarnished truth, thanks to the hard-pressed Dunlop. He has opened yet another Pandora’s box in a country that is being stripped daily of any illusions it may still harbor about its politicians.

We are all beginning to discover that such enormous scandals are not solely the preserve of the Italians. Until now, they were the most discredited in Europe. Our home-grown version is not far behind.