Lawlor used jail time to get fit

LIAM LAWLOR used his time in Mountjoy prison earlier this year to get fit and do some paperwork, but still feels he should not have been there.

The former Fianna Fáil TD at the centre of the Flood Tribunal into planning matters also claims to have co-operated with the inquiry far more than the public have been led to believe. In a radio interview, Mr Lawlor described his seven day’s “national service” last January as a discipline. He spent a week in January and a further month from early February in the jail for failing to comply with tribunal orders.

“I worked out a lot in the gym every morning, I read a lot, dictated a lot of notes and did a lot of paperwork. I lost weight and came out very fit,” he said. “What was in my head was that there was a certain injustice in being there and then to get on and use the time productively, and that’s what I did,” he told RTÉ’s News at One.

Mr Lawlor said he will put the story right in time and he has a clear conscience. “My legal people were in private session, co-operating, I believe that’s totally different to the public perception,” he said. “If you’re a born optimist like I am, you always have a belief in your own abilities to achieve whatever you set your mind to and you achieve it,” the ex-TD said.

Mr Lawlor also questioned the lengths to which the tribunal has been going to investigate his activities.

“When you’re into searching the Czech Republic ... and all the documentation and detail, you begin to assume that maybe this thing has gone way above and beyond its call of duty, but that’s the way it’s operating and I have no problem with it,” he said.

He was also pleased with the feedback he received after he defended himself in the Dáil, on temporary release from his 28-day sentence in February. He also believes there was strong support for him to seek re-election. “Everywhere I went there were people urging me to contest it. It was a combination of decisions that I really wanted to move on and do other things,” he said.