TÁNAISTE Michael McDowell gave his full support to doubling the salaries of lawyers working for the Planning Tribunal while he served as Attorney General in 1999, it has emerged.

EFFORTS by Mary Harney to banish smog from Dublin in the late 1980s weren’t a total success.

THERE is clearly a need for a Centre for Public Inquiry, but whether it is the current self-appointed body is seriously open to question.

LIKE myself and the wider world, you may have been under the illusion that this country was democratically run by the Government on a cabinet basis.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell should be ashamed of himself for carrying out what retired Judge Feargus Flood termed a “drumhead court-martial” against investigative journalist Frank Connolly.

THE controversy surrounding Justice Minister Michael McDowell’s allegation that Frank Connolly visited Colombia on a false passport has been given a new and significant perspective by pointed criticism of the minister from a former High Court judge.

DEMOCRACY and a legal right to due process under the courts has been trampled recently. Ironically, it was done by the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, who is meant to be the guardian of legal justice for all in Ireland.

The chairman of the Centre for Public Inquiry (CPI) backed its executive director Frank Connolly today.

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell has helped torpedo an independent watchdog set up to scrutinise the activities of politicians and big business.

THE controversial Corrib gas pipeline was promised a fast-track path through the planning process, documents reveal.

A RUPTURE or leak from the controversial gas pipeline on the north Mayo coast would cause massive casualties and countless deaths, a report claimed yesterday.

LIAM LAWLOR was “an engaging, witty and larger-than-life character”, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said.

The family of former Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor, who was killed in a car crash in Moscow, today hit out at claims he may have been with a prostitute at the time of his death.

Mr Justice Feargus Flood, who had many a battle with Liam Lawlor during his appearances at Dublin Castle, has joined in sending his condolences to the family of the controversial former TD.

THE death of former building company director James Gogarty on Thursday has made it less likely that anybody will ever face a criminal prosecution for corruption uncovered by the Planning Tribunal.

JUDGE Liam Hamilton once said to me that he was sure he would get no thanks for exposing the malpractices in the beef industry, and all the other stuff that surrounded it.

THE director of the construction company which built the controversial home of former minister Ray Burke in Swords has been refused the vast majority of his legal costs by the Planning Tribunal.

The Government preparing to ram its contentious Disability Bill through the Dáil before the summer recess.

ONE of the main witnesses in the Planning Tribunal, James Gogarty, 86, has applied for €3.5m in legal costs arising out of his long-running involvement with the inquiry.

DIRECTOR of Public Prosecutions James Hamilton has broken unprecedented ground by apologising to the husband of a woman fatally injured in a crash in which the State failed to prosecute for alleged driving offences.

FORMER chairman of the planning tribunal, Justice Feargus Flood, said yesterday that the fees paid to his staff in the seven-year-long, €30 million inquiry were perfectly justified.

RAY BURKE and NASA’s capsule, Genesis, have a few things in common. They were both in orbit and both came crashing down to earth in spectacular fashion.

BUILDERS Tom Brennan and Joseph McGowan must pay their own legal costs of over €2.6 million after the Planning Tribunal ruled the State was not obliged to foot their bill.

FORMER minister Ray Burke was dealt another huge financial blow yesterday after the Planning Tribunal rejected his application for the State to pay his €10.5 million legal bill.

RAY BURKE will probably welcome the fact that neither he nor his legal team were required to attend Dublin Castle yesterday to hear the Planning Tribunal chairman, Judge Alan Mahon, issue a ruling that will see him out of pocket for some considerable time.

Former government minister Ray Burke was today hit with a massive legal bill for more than €10m after he was found to have hindered the Planning Tribunal.

FORMER minister, Ray Burke will learn today if taxpayers will be forced to pick up the €10.5m legal bill from his long-running involvement with the Planning Tribunal.

The Planning Tribunal will next week rule if former minister Ray Burke should be granted costs, it emerged tonight.

FORMER Fianna Fáil minister Ray Burke could face up to five years in jail after pleading guilty to two charges of making false tax returns involving the non- declaration of almost €225,000 in income.

Taxpayers should not be expected to pay countless millions to keep the Mahon Tribunal into planning corruption going for more than a decade, it was claimed tonight.

FORMER Fianna Fáil minister Ray Burke has advised the chairman of the Planning Tribunal, Judge Alan Mahon, to look “close to home” for the source of leaks of confidential papers from the inquiry.

It is remarkable that those lobbying for the rights of people with disabilities in this country have faced an unrelenting struggle with successive governments, and continue to do so with the current administration.

YESTERDAY’S long-awaited appearance of property developer Tom Gilmartin at the Mahon Tribunal has rekindled popular interest in this murky saga of bribery and corruption in Irish politics.

Nobody is likely to have been surprised that Mr Justice Feargus Flood concluded in his third interim report that George Redmond received corrupt payments, or that he and other people hindered the work of the Flood Tribunal.

GEORGE REDMOND, who is serving a 12-month prison sentence on corruption charges, could face further criminal prosecutions for the same offence after the latest interim report by the Planning Tribunal found he had received bribes from two businessmen in the late 1980s.

SWIFT action by the authorities is required to back up the strong and lucid report of Mr Justice Feargus Flood, spokespeople across the range of political parties argued yesterday.

IF George Redmond felt the world ceased to exist upon his arrest by the Criminal Assets Bureau at Dublin Airport four years ago, he must surely believe the heavens collapsed entirely on his life yesterday.

FORMER assistant Dublin city and county manager George Redmond lodged sums of money equivalent to the value of “a substantial house” each year since the early 1960s to his bank accounts, according to the Planning Tribunal.

FORMER minister Ray Burke has launched a head-on legal challenge against the State to force taxpayers into footing his 10.5m legal bill from the Planning Tribunal.

DISGRACED former Fianna Fáil Justice Minister Ray Burke, who sold his house for almost €4 million in 2000 and received corrupt payments totalling at least £250,000 in the 1980s, will be seeking free legal aid to fight tax charges brought against him yesterday.

NOBODY will shed a tear for Ray Burke, the disgraced ex-minister for Justice and Foreign Affairs once described as “honourable” by the Taoiseach.

THE attack on Health Minister Micheál Martin by Judge Alison Lindsay is remarkable both for its ferocity and also because it represents a threat to organise a judicial boycott of future tribunals.

AS the first public official convicted of corruption in the history of the State, the guilty verdict in the trial of former Dublin assistant city and county manager George Redmond marks a watershed in the fight against white collar crime.

THE Government acknowledged yesterday that it was fully aware of Judge Alan Mahon's 1992 tax settlement at the time he was appointed.