I am not a bitter old man, says Gilmartin

FORMER developer Tom Gilmartin hit back yesterday at business rival Owen O’Callaghan, who had attacked him and the way the Mahon Planning Tribunal was conducting its inquiry.

“I am not a bitter, twisted old man,” said Mr Gilmartin, 73, in an apparent response to his former business colleague, whom he accuses of funding corrupt payments to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and other politicians.

Mr O’Callaghan issued a public statement on Thursday in which he had described Mr Gilmartin as a bitter, failed businessman who was far from being the victim he portrayed himself to be in their dealings on the Quarryvale project, being probed by the tribunal.

The business relationship between the two men soured over the west Dublin development first identified by Mr Gilmartin in the late 1980s. Mr Gilmartin was made bankrupt and Mr O’Callaghan took control of the project which became the Liffey Valley shopping centre.

For the past several weeks the Sligo-born developer has been giving evidence at the tribunal probing the background to the Quarryvale rezoning amid allegations of corrupt payments.

Mr Gilmartin alleges Mr O’Callaghan was accustomed to boasting to him about his top-level political connections. He claimed the Cork-based businessman bragged of paying Taoiseach Bertie Ahern a total of IR£80,000 in connection with political favours in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In February 1989, the businessman told the tribunal, he was taken to the Fianna Fáil offices in Leinster House where demands for money were made.

He said he gave a IR£50,000 donation for the party to former environment minister Padraig Flynn. Mr Ahern was told about it, as was party national organiser Sean Sherwin, he said.

Cross-examined by Paul Sreenan SC, for Mr O’Callaghan, Mr Gilmartin claimed he had been isolated from the Quarryvale project because his former business partner had been aiming to get “ransom money” for the valuable site.

“He (O’Callaghan) was brought in by his political cohorts because they decided I was not a ball-player, not part of the circle,” said the witness.

Mr Gilmartin said government ministers, including Mr Ahern, had coaxed him to go ahead with Quarryvale in the early 1990s.

He had relied on the word “of our esteemed government and others. They were confident in me”.

“But when they discovered I was not a ball-player, suddenly the whole thing changed. I was not part of the circle and never would be — so the games started,” he added.

Former lobbyist Frank Dunlop told how he paid a IR£25,000 cheque in 1997 to the late politician Liam Lawlor, who had been hired by Mr O’Callaghan as a Quarryvale strategist. Mr Lawlor had asked for IR£50,000 to recompense him for work he had done for Mr O’Callaghan and drew up an invoice in the name of Ganley International Ltd which purported to be a “consultancy fee” for a study conducted in the Balkans.

Mr Dunlop said no such work was commissioned by, or carried out for, his company. He agreed with tribunal lawyer Patricia Dillon SC the invoice was made out so he could pay money to Mr Lawlor and put it through the Dunlop books.

He agreed he knew the invoice was false. “Virtually from the moment I received the invoice I regarded it as dodgy,” said Mr Dunlop.

Declan Ganley said his company, Ganley International Ltd, was involved in business, primarily in eastern Europe. He said the invoice, shown to the tribunal, was a forgery.

The tribunal adjourned until Monday.