Alleged £50k payment to Ahern ‘absolute rubbish’

CORK businessman Owen O’Callaghan has described an allegation that he paid £50,000 to former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for assistance on a property development in west Dublin as “absolute and total rubbish”.

Mr O’Callaghan told the Mahon Tribunal yesterday that he could offer no explanation why another property developer, Tom Gilmartin, would make such a claim about him and Mr Ahern.

“I never gave him a penny,” said Mr O’Callaghan on his third day of giving evidence at Dublin Castle. “It is even a silly question,” he added. But he acknowledged that he stood to gain almost £3m if Mr Gilmartin acquired local authority lands at Quarryvale as a result of an agreement between them.