Dunlop made £10,000 rezoning deal but did ‘virtually nothing’

FRANK DUNLOP made a £10,000 deal for his help with a land rezoning but made the landowners do all the work.

The former Government press officer and lobbyist told the Flood Tribunal he did “virtually nothing” for the three neighbours who jointly owned 22 acres at Carrickmines in south County Dublin.

He said all he did was send them a list of the names of Dublin County Council members and tell them to phone, visit or write to all of them to try to persuade them to support a rezoning motion.

He said he was “too busy” with other developments at the time to do the legwork himself and he agreed the advice he dispensed could have been delivered “in two sentences”.

But despite failing to get their land rezoned, the three men came back to Mr Dunlop four years later and agreed a deal worth £35,000 if he got involved in a second attempt at pushing the rezoning through.

Brian O’Halloran, Gerard Kilcoyne and Austin Darragh first sought Mr Dunlop’s help in getting their site rezoned for housing or industrial use in 1991/92 and paid him £1,500 up front with an additional £8,500 to follow if they were successful.

He did not get the £8,500 as the rezoning motion was defeated by a council vote but he received £5,000 up front and an additional £30,000 later when he got involved in their second rezoning attempt during the 1996/97 period.

He said the advice he dispensed to them during this period did not differ substantially from what he had given them during the first attempt.

Counsel for the tribunal, John Gallagher SC, asked repeatedly why the men would have paid Mr Dunlop such sums of money if he did very little for them.

Mr Dunlop replied that Mr O’Halloran, whom he dealt with on behalf of the three, knew nothing of the structure and workings of Dublin County Council and had described himself in his own statement to the tribunal as “naive” in such matters.

He insisted the fees arranged with Mr O’Halloran were not meant to cover financial inducements to councillors.

“I am absolutely 1,000% adamant he did not raise, I did not raise and we did not discuss the payment of money to councillors,” he said.

The relationship between Mr Dunlop and Mr O’Halloran, an architect by profession, took up much of yesterday’s hearing at Dublin Castle.

Mr Dunlop told the tribunal he had the distinct impression that Mr O’Halloran was not happy with his input into the rezoning effort during their 1991/92 arrangement, but a letter written by Mr O’Halloran to Mr Kilcoyne and Mr Darragh in April 1992 suggested otherwise.

In the letter Mr O’Halloran wrote: “Frank Dunlop is working at full pace on the task which we have set him and is regularly reporting to me.”

Mr Dunlop’s diaries support this impression as there were entries denoting regular meetings with Mr O’Halloran.

But despite these regular meetings with Mr O’Halloran, and despite also working for Jim Kennedy and John Caldwell in their attempts to have the neighbouring Jackson Way lands rezoned, Mr Dunlop said he did know that his two sets of clients were working together.

Letters submitted to the tribunal show that Mr O’Halloran and solicitor, Anthony Gore Grimes, for Messrs Kennedy and Caldwell, were sharing information as they felt they would have a better chance of getting their adjoining sites rezoned if they joined forces.

Mr Dunlop said he had never advised his two sets of clients collectively and did not know at the time they were working together.

“The only conclusion I can come to is that it was a deliberate strategy not to tell me,” he said.