Lawlor pulls no punches in Deadman’s Inn
For Tom Gilmartin, it happened in only three. This, in his words, is how it happened.
By mid-1988, Gilmartin's dream of building a shopping centre on Bachelors Walk in Dublin city centre was "turning to sand". At this stage, he was looking for new opportunities in west Dublin. After a bit of looking around, he plumped for a site at Quarryvale (now Liffey Valley). On a visit to his bank manager in Blanchardstown, he asked him if he know any landowners there.
The manager said no. But he pointed to a man standing at the public counter who might.
How unlucky can you get? The man at the counter was Brendan Fassnidge, a garage owner from Palmerstown. You will remember him as the man who bribed George Redmond and whose testimony put the former Dublin Assistant Manager behind bars. As soon as Fassnidge's name was mentioned we could see what was coming.
It was late afternoon and for the first time in a long day, a ripple of laughter pulsed through the hall in Dublin Castle.
"Fassnidge went out to his car ... He came back in. He had contacted someone, if I could meet him that evening at six or seven o'clock."
There was a bit of dramatics here on Gilmartin's part. We all knew who that someone would be. Sure enough, the man who marched into the Deadman's Inn (what an appropriate name) in Palmerstown that evening introduced himself: "I am Liam Lawlor TD," he said. Straight up he added that Bachelors Walk "was in his patch and he was appointed by the Government to take care of it".
Gilmartin had wanted to talk about Quarryvale but all Lawlor wanted to talk about was Bachelors Walk.
Two days later, Gilmartin was back in London for a meeting with senior executives of Arlington plc.
Just after the meeting started, it was interrupted by a phone call. "(Chief executive Raymond Mould) said there was a gentleman downstairs who said he was invited to this meeting.
"It's a Mr Lawlor. Does anybody know him? I said, yes, I know Mr Lawlor. I met him the other day.
"He says did you invite him to the meeting? I said no, but I did tell him that the meeting was taking place He walks in, pulls up a chair and sits right up to the table He was lying straight in front of my face.
"I was never so embarrassed in my life." Gilmartin held his tongue because he didn't want to have "two Paddies in a room arguing".
Lawlor said that having him on board would be the difference between success and failure.
Big Tom turned around to another Arlington executive, Ted Dadley, and whispered viciously: "That man is an effing hustler."
The others asked Gilmartin and Dadley to go to a nearby hotel and continued to talk to Lawlor.
Half-an-hour later Lawlor arrived at the hotel and said he had been taken on board as a consultant. Gilmartin's thunderous mood wasn't helped by what Lawlor said next.
He admits that the language he used was a little less polite. "(Lawlor) said to me that you have to give me half of your interest (his 20% share of the profits). I said you know what you can do, mate. I said to Dadley, it's not on. You are not getting it. "
How unlucky can you get? In Gilmartin's version, two days after never having met him before, Lawlor had gatecrashed an Arlington meeting and hustled his way into the deal. Lawlor denies all this, but knowing the man, the image is unforgettable, that of a bullfrog gobbling up everything that comes his way in a pond. Gilmartin, whose recollection of detail is immense, said yesterday he had a photographic memory. Lawlor is another man with a very self-assured recollection. His cross-examination of Gilmartin later this year is already beginning to shape up like an Ali v Foreman encounter.
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