Gilmartin may answer long-awaited questions

Caroline O’Dohertyon the ongoing development controversy.

IF Tom Gilmartin had had his way Bachelors Walk would be known as a smart shopping precinct bursting with chic boutiques and bijou cafes instead of the slightly shabby home of three jaded 20-somethings in an RTÉ sitcom.

Mr Gilmartin's ambitious 1980s plan to transform the then semi-derelict quayside into Dublin's newest commercial quarter could have dictated the direction of the massive development that would shape the city centre in the years ahead and might even have made crossing the Liffey a less traumatic experience for southsiders.

But Mr Gilmartin's way wasn't how things were done and he was too proud, too stubborn or too naive to understand they weren't going to change for him overnight.

The project ran into the usual headaches associated with major developments planning, zoning, sceptics, power plays but the most piercing pain of all for Mr Gilmartin seems to have been the implication that to smooth out difficulties, palms had to be greased.

Just how much greasing Mr Gilmartin did, to whom and to what, if any, effect are the questions tribunal-watchers have been waiting to have answered for the best part of six long years.

Tom Gilmartin, now aged 68, is originally from Lislarry, a townland near Grange village on the coast of north Sligo, a county that produces more phonebook listings for the distinctive Gilmartin name than all of the 01 area.

One of six children, his father worked a small farm and laboured for the county council to make ends meet. Young Thomas was of a generation born to emigration.

He tried to delay the inevitable by applying for the civil service but though considered a bright prospect, he lost out on a post apparently to a better-connected young man. It seems clear Mr Gilmartin left home angry at his country's backwardness and embraced a Britain on the verge of the swinging '60s, brimming with industrial activity and confidence.

He joined the Vauxhall car plant in Luton, working his way through various departments until he knew the manufacturing side well enough to set up on his own and started supplying automated production line systems.

Inexperienced in business, he went bust several times but always bounced back and by the late 1970s had sufficient investment capital to try his hand at the property market.

Beginning with the fast-growing town of Milton Keynes, he started buying up sites, forming partnerships to develop office blocks, selling them on to companies at a handsome profit and beginning again elsewhere.

In the 1980s, he redeveloped a rundown shopping centre in Bangor, Co Down , and then turned his attention to Dublin. As Bachelors Walk became bogged down, he began to concentrate on Quarryvale, a strategically important green belt at a junction of the then almost finished M50 motorway.

If he had had his way, it would now be one of Europe's largest shopping centres with a business park, hotel and sports and leisure facilities, but he again ran into difficulties and again he failed to smooth them over.

In the end, under pressure from the banks, Cork-based property developer Owen O'Callaghan bought him out and created the more modest but highly-profitable Liffey Valley Centre which opened six years ago. Around the same time reports of rezoning irregularities in the early days of the Quarryvale project were surfacing along with Mr Gilmartin's name.

It emerged he had given £50,000 (€63,500) to EU Commissioner Padraig Flynn at the time he was minister for environment.

At first Mr Gilmartin wanted nothing to do with the Flood (now Mahon) Tribunal. However, he changed his mind in 1999 after becoming incensed when Mr Flynn went on the Late Late Show and made patronising remarks about him and his ailing wife.

A lot of time has passed since and the Gilmartins now spend much time in relaxing surroundings in Sligo leading to speculation Tom's ire must have gone off the boil by now.

But if he drives from home to Dublin Castle, he'll have to pass Liffey Valley on the way. He should at least be simmering energetically by the time he gets there.