Gilmartin was ‘ahead of his time’

TOM Gilmartin’s aim to transform the Quarryvale site into a major retail development on the fringes of Dublin was described to the Mahon Tribunal yesterday as over-ambitious given the country’s economic state in the late 1980s.

“A visionary — but a man before his time,” was AIB Bank corporate banker Dave McGrath’s description of the Sligo-born developer, who initiated the project from his then base in Luton, England.

Had Mr Gilmartin brought forward the proposal 10 years later, in 1998, to develop a substantial shopping centre off the M50 motorway, he would probably have pulled it off, the banker added.